In the past couple of years, I've been in the classrooms of student teachers who are experiencing their final semester in college at Pittsburg State University in Southeast Kansas.  When I was a teacher in elementary school, I accepted the responsibility to host student teachers in my fourth grade classroom on several occasions, but once I started supervising these students in their professional semester, I started to see things differently.  I also started communicating to them differently.

There is something to be said about a Sink-or-Swim approach for these young people.  They've received four years of college classes, and presumably, some of those classes should have prepared them for being in a classroom as a leader, but that couldn't be farther from the truth.  Thinking back to my first teaching experiences, I realize how presumptuous it is to believe that they are prepared.  I wasn't, and neither are they.

I've discovered that, though I give them specific instructions for how to improve, they don't often respond by taking those hints and running with them.  And that's where the mentor-teacher comes in.  I must have failed when I was in that position, but I see it now:  the mentor-teacher - the regular teacher in that classroom, the one giving up authority to allow a college student to take over for an amount of time - that teacher is crucial if the student is ever going to learn and adapt.

Before they ever begin to take over that class, the student is supposed to watch and assist.  What are they seeing?  Are you a mentor who never has adapted and grown yourself?  Are you also flailing around, drowning in the waters of classroom management and organization?  I've been in some classes to observe student teachers, and I've had to wonder if the regular teacher had any more control or was able to effectively engage the class him/herself.  It's pretty obvious actually.

My message for the mentor teacher is that this is not a vacation for you.  If you're just going to sit back and relax while they take over, you've volunteered for an opportunity that is lost on you.  Yes, you could develop lessons, prepare materials, and organize things for your return to the classroom (That's what I did.), but first, you must be a positive example for the college student.

How do you do that?  For one, you must set some expectations for the student teacher.  Let him know explicitly what you expect from him.  Hold her accountable for her actions in your classroom.  And don't forget that you are there to teach them directly.  Being an example is a valuable part of the experience, but you must also teach.  How about this?  While you are teaching your regular class, if something works, point it out on the spot to the student teacher.  Take a moment to ask him why it worked.  Mention that it is one of the skills you have developed that causes the class to flow more smoothly and causes students to remain engaged and on task.

​I recently sat in a professional development meeting - a grade-level meeting.  Within the meeting, teachers committed many faux pas:  they shared out and they referred to kiddos.  They wanted everyone to be on the same page and encouraged each other to stick to the teachers edition.

But I soon noticed another issue:  many of them also wanted to cover everything before the test.  They've figured out which lessons to omit, which lessons to consolidate, which assignments to make, how to present the information to small groups, whole groups, and...

Whew!

You see, these teachers - as good as their intentions may be - want to get to it all, and in doing so, they skip across the surface of everything.  I fear that in skipping along the surface, they fail to swim in the deep waters.  They rush to get things done in hopes of adhering to a pacing guide.

It is a trap that emerges from committing themselves to a script, failing to keep their classrooms autonomous, and failing to take empowerment by the horns.  It is a trap that comes from relying on a text.  It is a trap deriving from an inability to create and instill creativity.

If you are of this ilk, my suggestion is to get your nose out of the book, curate your own materials, grow your own style, go off script, and take the bull by the horns.  Whenever you teach, teach well.  Never be satisfied with simply exposing your students to a topic rather than covering it more fully.  If it's worth teaching, it's worth making it stick.  We're not in the business of handing out samples; we are in the business of serving full meals.

OK, I know, there are moments within our school year in which students need to be allowed to belly up to the smorgasbord where they can try new tastes in order to find their niches.  Generally speaking, however, it is absolutely important for teachers to swim deeper, climb higher, and add rigor to lessons.  Be patient enough to teach well not spread things too thinly.

I recently sat in on interviews to replace one of our school employees.  One of the questions in the interviews involved the concept that we have shared leadership responsibilities at Cecil Floyd.  Shared leadership is something we have slowly developed in our elementary school.  In means that decisions are not made by one boss or rule maker, but by representatives of the staff.  Parents, community members and, of course, students also have input.  We work together to learn from our mistakes and find solutions to improve our environment.

We heard answers from a handful of candidates.  Teachers helping in the interviews were concerned when a candidate was too meek, too withholding, or too talkative.  At the end of all of the interviews, the question arose about whether a direct answer was better or worse than a story leading to an answer.  This reminded me of an article in Inc. magazine (online), headlined Public Speaking Is no Longer a 'Soft Skill':  It's Your Key to Success in Any Field.  The so-called soft skill of storytelling is discussed.  One entrepreneur was quoted as follows:

Truthfully, I have spoken to my brother on a couple of occasions about this.  He used to be a corrections officer in a women's maximum security prison, and in trading notes about what we did, it sounded like we could have traded jobs and not noticed a difference. That, of course, is preposterous.  In a prison, detainees are locked in; at school, weirdos are locked out.  In a school, the teacher rewards difficult assignments and records the results.  In the prison, inmates may earn rewards or get out early for good behavior.  Time out might be similar, KP may be similar, and we need to stop pointing out the similarities and start emphasizing the differences instead.