A few weeks ago, I was dropped from from my internship classroom at Cave City High School. It was something that I had been worried would happen since Junior year when we were in Practicum, getting ready to enter the internship process. I have always doubted myself in a number of areas throughout the 20 something years I have been able to have doubts about myself. The internship became one of those areas of doubt.
At the beginning of the internship, I was very nervous, as one might expect a brand new intern would be. The first couple of weeks of observation were very calm. I caught myself wishing that was all I would have to do in the internship, knowing full well that it was not a good thing to wish for (insert self-disappointment). As the taking over of my first class loomed, I became even more nervous, knowing that it was going to be a lot more than just running down the hall to make copies.
Getting up and talking in front of a large group of people is certainly not my forte. In fact, it gives me extreme anxiety. Before now, I had asked myself, based solely on this fear, why I was choosing to be a teacher. Now was time to answer that question. I wanted to be a teacher for the kids. I chose students over my own fear. Still, however, it did not come naturally to me at all to get up and teach 50-minute lessons. Each day there were several times in my lessons that Mrs. Sandy had to correct me or fill in a giant hole of important information that I had failed to give the students. It was adding to the list of things that were lowering my confidence in my teaching abilities each day.
After about 7 weeks of this, Mrs. Sandy, Ms. Crosby and I all sat down together to voice our concerns. It seemed to give me a bit of a boost, and I could feel myself doing a bit better and feeling slightly more confident than I had been. However, while I was focusing more on better planning, I failed to strengthen areas I already wasn't paying much attention to, namely classroom management. My last day there, I was helping a student early in class, giving all of my attention to her instead of the other students. Meanwhile, there were two boys looking at a yearbook, one of which was out of his desk. After about five minutes of them cutting up and laughing about the pictures, and me not saying anything about it, Mrs. Sandy took it into her own hands. Within seconds, the yearbook was put away, the one boy was back at his assigned seat, and I knew I was in trouble. After class, Mrs. Sandy and I had a very long conversation about my lack of multitasking abilities and my inability to effectively manage the classroom. Later that night, I got a call from Ms. Crosby saying that Mrs. Sandy had opted to forgo the internship, putting me in a really terrible position.
After about a week full of searching, Ms. Crosby finally found me a temporary spot at Southside High School, where I have basically gone back to practicum. Just what I wanted right? Wrong. After being in front of the class every day at Cave City, going back to just sitting and watching other people teach is pretty boring. But I only have one more week. In the meantime, we are still trying to find a classroom for me to take over next semester, and with only one option left, my nerves are coming back to show me that my future is on the line. I have certainly learned a lesson in all of this.
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