First Five Weeks of Student Teaching

I am at the end of my fifth week doing my Student Teaching with Dusty Schmidt at Centennial Elementary and Cami Clausen at Casteel High School. Negative out of the way first: getting sick my third and fifth week for three days each.

Okay, now that that is out of the way, student teaching has been really great. The very first day you would assume that I would've been a nervous wreck going in to this; but no, it's been so much fun. The first two weeks I was with Dusty M-F, and I've been able to learn a lot from her and model some of her teaching strategies. I even got inspired to make up my own little tune from a poem I found online called My Big Fat Cat. We, jointly, made a lesson that would be really great for 1st-3rd Graders, looking into using instruments and brainstorming things that you would have the Fat Cat eat. Making rhythms. What I hadn't expected was for the lesson to last three whole days in 2nd grade. That was crazy. And something that was sad is that I couldn't be in it for all three lessons, (because of sickness).

Dusty gave me a lot of books that I could potentially make a lesson with and I made a lesson (which I hopefully will do this week) called Something from Nothing. It's a story about a Jewish boy and his family during the 1800s. It talks about how this boy received a present from his Grandpa when he was very young and how over the years the Grandfather changed it so that it got smaller and smaller (because of use). We're going to use repeating things to bring instruments and rhythms into the mix. I'm going to do it with the first graders this next week.

And I really love Dusty's Ireland unit that she is teaching so I am modeling her PowerPoint lesson and making a Peruvian Music lesson. I think I am going to present it to fifth grade when Dusty finishes her Irish lesson.

Working with Dusty has been such a treat. She is a motivated music teacher that just inspires me to be my best self. She's really exciting and has lots of great ideas and it has been really fun watching her teach all the lessons that she has under her belt. She's really fun.

Cami Clausen is great as well. I only see her and her students on Mondays and Fridays, and it has only been for the last three weeks. On my second day with her class, she was not feeling very good because she hadn't gotten enough sleep so she left her classes in my hands, and if I hadn't been so experienced with ASC, I'm sure that would have been a very hard thing for me to do, but it was pretty natural, the only thing that was different was the students I was working with.

Cami has given me two pieces for me to work on with the students: Adoramus Te with her group, Forte; and Rio, Rio with her middle school students. I've had good experiences so far and have made some friends so far with her students.

Both teachers have been really good to me. I am not even describing everything that they've helped me with.