The Student Teaching Experience
This month’s education spotlight will share student teachers’ thoughts and experiences during their internship. The internship provided student teachers with every opportunity to grow as confident and thoughtful teachers. They wrote this brief introduction during their student teaching to share with the CU community.
“ I, Kali Hazelwood, am a Carolina University student currently finishing my Bachelor of Science degree in elementary education by student teaching at Vandalia Christian School in Greensboro, NC. During this time, I have taught Bible, spelling, language, phonics, math, reading, cursive writing, and history. Throughout the past thirteen weeks, there have been many wonderful moments of teaching and a few frustrating moments of teaching…
“One wonderful moment is of the day before my first in-class observation I explained to my students that my professor would be coming in to observe me teach and I asked them to be on their best behavior when she was in the classroom. The morning of my observation, when welcoming my students for the day, one of the girls in my class asked me if I liked her outfit. I responded with ‘Yes, I do! You look very pretty!’ and she proceeded to tell me that she had picked the outfit out especially for me since my professor was going to be in the class that day. While this incident has no academic value, it had a tremendous impact on my heart.”
“My name is Joy Findley and I am currently student teaching at High Point Christian Academy. I am a music education major and my primary instrument is piano. I have been teaching general music classes from TK (a transitional kindergarten) to 5th grade.
One of my favorite memories from my time student teaching was when I had been out for a day and missed the TK class due to an eye injury. The next week when I taught the class, they gathered around me and told me they loved and missed me when I had been out. It was so cute!”
“My name is Emily Kurz, and I am from Sanford, Florida. This semester, I have had the amazing opportunity to student teach high school English at Salem Baptist Christian School. Teaching is known to be a difficult, however rewarding, career choice. Adding on the pandemic restrictions only increases the demands and expectations of teachers. During my internship, I taught in-person students and online students simultaneously for almost all of my classes. At times, it was difficult to strategize lessons that would be inclusive to all students. Thankfully, the advancement of technology and the unlimited amount of teaching resources provided me the necessary tools to teach my students who were either at home or in the classroom…
As a facilitator of knowledge, it is my responsibility to engage diverse learners and work to improve student motivation. So, I want to share one of the students’ engaging activities that I did in class. After studying Hamlet for a few weeks, my juniors designed a Facebook “page” for the Hamlet character of their choice. The example not only accommodated for different learning styles, but also helped students grasp the material better with increased engagement. See the Facebook for the Hamlet character below that students created.”
“My name is Ralee McGee, and I am in the health and physical education tract at Carolina University. I am currently student teaching at Salem Baptist Christian School in Winston-Salem. This experience has challenged me in ways I never thought that it would. Since I am a special class teacher, I teach every grade from preschool all the way to seniors in high school in addition to teaching all day every day, which has been difficult to get used to. Student teaching has been rewarding as I have had opportunities to get to know a lot of students personally and see them blossom in certain games. Before I began student teaching, I prayed that God would give me an opportunity to share the gospel with a student, and He did give me that opportunity.”
