What have I learned?

Looking back on this semester, I realize I have been exceptionally hard on myself. It's easy as a student teacher to hold yourself to the same standard as your mentor teacher, who has significantly more experience teaching. Sometimes I think I forget the "student" part of my title. But looking back, I realize that my experience this semester would be much more successful if I framed it differently. Rather than focus on the things I have done wrong, I think I should focus on what I have learned. My education has been plentiful. I have learned simple things like classroom housekeeping, how to keep grades in a grade book and work simple classroom technology. I have learned about cross-curricular lesson planning and integrating the liberal arts into the English curriculum. I have attended professional development classes and learned about the CORE curriculum which is replacing Frameworks in Arkansas. I participated in the planning of a long-term activity in the form of the Renaissance Faire that my mentor teacher puts on every year with her AP and tenth grade classes, and in her annual study of a Victorian Christmas. Having access to several very successful high school English teachers, not only those in the school I student teach at, but Batesville as well, and also several former English teachers, I have learned how to take bits and pieces of what all of these capable teachers do and make it my own. This is probably the most important lesson I have learned. Nothing under the sun is new, but finding ways to present the same information differently, and possibly more effectively, has been a very valuable lesson, and the contacts that I have made have helped me to form valuable connections in the education community before I even have my own classroom.