3 Ways To Prepare Yourself To Start Student Teaching

If you have plans to start student teaching soon, you might be feeling both nervous and excited about this step towards your future profession. Since student teaching is often the first time many prospective teachers will actually be in a classroom with students, it’s vital that you are properly prepared and ready for the adventure, as the last thing you want to do is fail your students.

To help you have the best chances of success here, here are three ways to prepare yourself to start student teaching. 

Introduce Yourself To The Parents

As you’re getting ready for your first day in the classroom, on top of doing things like going to the spa to get in the right mindset, you should also reach out to the parents of the students that you’ll be teaching. 

To best do this, you should craft a letter or email that you’ll send out to the parents. In this letter, introduce yourself and share with the parents what your educational background is. You can also share some of your ideas for what you’ll be doing with their kids during your time as their student teacher. Along with this information, give parents a way to contact you and explain to them that you’d love any feedback they have to help you become a better teacher. By doing this, you can start yourself off on the right foot with some of your biggest supports in the classroom. 

Learn How To Learn From Your Cooperative Teacher

In addition to all the teaching you’ll be doing as a student teacher, you’ll also be doing a lot of learning from the cooperative teacher that you’ll be working with. 

To help you have the best possible relationship with your cooperative teacher, it’s important that you learn how to learn from them. To do this, try to come up with questions you can ask in order to glean some invaluable knowledge from your cooperative teacher, like how they manage the classroom, what techniques have worked or haven’t worked for them in the past, and any advice they can give you. 

Embrace Flexibility

While you might have a lot of ideas and expectations about how you think your time student teaching will go, what you really need to learn during this time is how to be flexible. It’s very likely that things won’t go as well as you’re hoping, so being able to go with the flow, think on the fly, and roll with the punches will make your time student teaching much more enjoyable and useful to both you and your students. 

If you’ll be student teaching in the near future, consider using the tips mentioned above to help you prepare for this time spent in the classroom.