Early Days

I have always wanted to be a morning person.  But I am not.  Waking up before the sun is hard, hard, hard, but I guess that's just what teachers do.  So now it's what I do, because this is my first week as a student teacher.

I've never been a student teacher before, and my supervising teacher has never supervised one, either.  I feel a little like I've been tossed into the deep end of the swimming pool, and I'm struggling to keep my head above water.  I can't help but imagine that in some ways starting a new job as a media specialist would be easier than becoming a student teacher.  Presumably, I would first get to know my library - read the collection, contact jobbers, set a schedule, develop a routine, etc. BEFORE I worked on building collaborative relationships with classroom teachers.  Now, I'm expected to do all those things concurrently. 

I'm struggling because the lessons I'm supposed to teach have already been taught.  My supervising teacher has already spent time with the classroom teachers developing the lessons, coming up with lesson plans, creating handouts, and making sure things work.  It would be one thing if I could observe those lessons being taught in the classroom one day, go home at the end of the day and develop a revised lesson plan on my own, and then present it the next day with my supervising teacher there as back up.  But it doesn't work that way in the media center.  Classes come in one after another, so I guess I'll prepare in advance and adapt as I go.  Actually, I imagine that is kind of authentic to the teaching experience...

Something else that worries me - how can I be prepared for running my own school library with only 10 weeks of student teaching?!? I would gladly give up a semester or more of my time in order to gain a more in depth experience, but instead my time is split up into two 5 week long sessions.  I have to hit the ground running and then have the rug yanked out from under me just when I'm hitting my stride.  Frustrating.

On a brighter note, I am looking forward to some of the teaching opportunities I'll have in the coming weeks.  The end of this week and the beginning of next week I'll be presenting a Book Speed Dating activity to 7th graders in the media center.  Then I get to present resources for a multi-genre bibliography project to 8th graders.  Later I'll be teaching lessons on website evaluation to 7th grade keyboarding classes. 

Hopefully I'll also have an opportunity to develop a multi-day lesson with the Current Events teacher who my supervising teacher co-teaches with.  From what I can tell, most teachers and students at this school rely on powerpoint for all their presentation needs.  I'd love to introduce the Current Events class to Prezi - I think it would be an awesome tool for presenting current events issues.