At my student
teaching placement I just finished my last week of teaching. It was a
bittersweet feeling and I enjoyed making the plans for my teacher to finish the
school year. I wrote plans so that she is able to use the lessons and units I
created until it goes into finals for our students. This week was focused on
finishing certain units and making sure that my students did not have any late
work for me. I feel like I had one of the best experiences as a student teacher
because of my cooperating teacher. Not only did she allow me to have full
control of the classroom but she was still there when I needed support from
her. I noticed that in the beginning, before I would carry forward with a
lesson/unit, handling a behavior, or dealing with staff I would ask for her
advice before I would implement it. I noticed that by the end of my experience
that I would implement it myself and then ask her later on how she would handle
the situation or what she would have done. It made me feel competent that I
could handle myself as a professional and growing into the teacher that I am
aiming to be. I was able to be a part of three IEP meeting this week. My
teacher allowed me to make one of my students IEP's and then looked over it the
day before the meeting. We used the program "Easy IEP," and it helped
me not only to see the process but the interaction between, staff, parents and
with the student. Out of the three meetings only one parent showed up, which
happened to be the one that I was leading. Before the meeting I was very
nervous, but once it was started I found it to go very smoothly. The other
meetings had to be done over speaker phone and I was able to see the difference
in communication from being face to face to over the speaker. I felt like the
parents felt confused at some parts and also took ideas differently than they
would in person. What I liked about these IEP meetings is that the student was
in the room to be a part of the process and have their say in the matter.
