The most extensive and in-depth field experience is student teaching. You are required to perform this exercise to obtain your teaching degree. Typically lasting from at least five weeks to 2 semesters, student teaching places you for an extended period shadowing the same mentoring teacher, with a consistent daily schedule, and servicing the same students. In essence, you do everything your mentoring teacher does.
As you begin your placement, you’ll typically just observe for a few days. You’ll get a feel for the climate, culture, and content of the class, and you’ll reflect on your observations. As you and your mentoring teacher begin to feel comfortable, you’ll gradually start taking over the teaching responsibilities. You’ll progress to taking over one or two classroom activities, then to taking over most classroom activities, with the eventual goal of taking charge of the entire class. The mentoring teacher is available for support and to assist with any problems you might encounter, as well as to provide guidance on how to cope with any difficulties that may arise. You will be given a few weeks of solo classroom management, after which you’ll slowly begin to hand the class back over to the collaborating/mentoring teacher, reversing the process by allowing them to observe, take over a few activities, and so on.
An important aspect of student teaching is the reflection process. Regardless of whether your course requires it, keeping a student teaching journal is an excellent personal tool. This could be as simple as a log of each day’s events, using brief, open-ended bullet points. You can extend your student teaching journal to include your observations of your mentoring teacher, including his or her classroom management style, behavior, responses, and reactions to various situations. Include this along with your objectives for the field experience, observations of your own developing classroom management style, behavior, and responses to events that arise in the classroom and how you can improve these.
During a typical internship, students are in classrooms two full days per week. They have the opportunity to observe teaching, to work with small groups of students, and to complete independent study projects to engage in experiential learning. Also, internship students are expected to complete assignments from their co-requisite courses.
Student teachers are placed in schools and assume the work schedule of a full-time teacher, all day, five days a week, for a full semester. Interns practice to develop knowledge, skills, and dispositions of the teaching profession. Particular emphasis is placed on planning, in which interns practice long-range, intermediate, and daily planning for student performance based on planned instruction; and using time management and classroom management skills that are essential to student achievement.
Members of the college of education faculty supervise internships and collaborate with collaborating/mentor teachers to guide the intern in developing knowledge, skills, and dispositions and to evaluate teaching practice. The collaborating/mentoring teacher is responsible for providing guidance and feedback as necessary and communicating with your college advisor about your progress and participation.
You should try to develop a good working relationship with your collaborating/ mentoring teacher. As well as influencing your academic performance, he or she is also a valuable source of learning and guidance and can be considered as one of the resources during your teaching education. Your degree of involvement in the classroom activities will be based largely on your relationship with your mentoring teacher.