Patricia A. Gourley-Biggs

ENG 608

June 23, 2003

Exercise #1: Personal Experience

I thought I would sit down and pen a few thoughts about the process and the product of my student teaching experience. After working in the banking industry for several years I decided to make a career change. I returned to the University of Oregon to finish my last year of undergraduate work then completed concurrent Master’s degrees in education and public administration. Then I entered the Secondary Teacher Licensing Program in Professional Technical Education at OSU to obtain a secondary teaching license in business education and information technology. The year went by very, very quickly, the entire year of my teaching experience at Harrisburg High School was frustrating, exciting, challenging leaving me with mixed feelings of whether to run or stay. I found as I assembled the chronology of events that transpired in one year that it was one of the most memorable years of my entire life leaving me with lasting impressions of the "first" students in my fledgling teaching career. I worked extremely hard that year just to keep up with the OSU’s PTE program, online coursework, my practicum, my teaching experience, and finally completing my portfolio. The portfolio became a chronology of all my frustrations, confusion, elation, hard work, instruction plans, determination, and tears, yes, tears; tears of relief, tears of fear, tears of joy, tears of regret, and tears of goodbye.

I found that each one of my students had left their print on my memory. Each student was very kind, helpful, willing to learn, patient, and most of all accepting of me as their student teacher. Therefore, I dedicated my portfolio to Harrisburg High School Business Education and Technology Lab, my first "test kitchen classroom". My mentor teacher was always there for me, as well as the secretary who taught me how to tame the beast of a copy machine. In fact, everyone at Harrisburg High School was there for me; the teachers, the career counselor, coaches, cooks, custodians, and Cookie the librarian. I will always remember the wonderful and terribly scary experience I had at this great school.

Student teaching is probably the best of times and the worst of times when one first embarks on their journey into teaching as a career. Nevertheless, it is the best way to find out if you can take the heat in the kitchen. I think I did, and I try to be the best possible business education and technology teacher that I can be. I practice constructivist-teaching methods, maintain a student-centered classroom environment, and always, always practice professional conduct. Most of all I continue to learn and gain just as my students demonstrate learning gains I expect to observe measurable learning gains in my teaching. My student teaching experience was one of the greatest learning experiences of my life almost as great as the learning experience of being a parent.

My mentor teacher was the high school basketball coach. When I say, all love him; I mean all love him. He was a tough act to follow. He is very organized, has a dynamite presentation style, and is effective and efficient in his overall teaching. Put this together with his coaching ability and you have a very popular teacher. I did not try to imitate his style other than to keep my lectures moving at a fast pace as he did. I attempted to lecture at a fast, efficient, and effective pace that promoted student-centered learning. I learned that I must be thoroughly prepared for each lesson and that lesson plans are like a script, memorize them, practice them, and keep them at hand always. My mentor teacher did not use lesson plans, I tried his way but soon learned I did not have the experience to teach without some form of structured plan before me. The students were very good about me using the lesson plans, I made copies for them, they liked this because when I gave them an assignment to complete from the lesson they could refer to the lesson plan for information on the topics in the assignment. By keeping a fast pace, maintaining professional conduct with the students I met my lesson objectives and goals.

Classroom management did not present a real problem. I communicated my expectations to the class clearly about my requirements for classroom conduct. I required them to participate in the lecture, complete their daily assignments, and after these two requirements were met, they could have a snack and work on their computers. I began bringing snacks such as muffins for the students to have after their work had been completed just before the end of class. This worked with the students, I did not ever have the need to remove a student from class, nor did I have any problem with them after we worked out this behavior plan. Sometimes students were more interested in surfing the net than actually working on their assignments or participating in discussions. Some students due to frequent tardiness had to be reminded several times to be on time or suffer the consequences. However, when they were reminded of the behavior plan they complied with my requests.

Throughout the entire teaching experience I remained calm, ready to learn from my mentor teacher and the students, prepared for sudden unforeseen difficulties and maintained a professional demeanor throughout the entire experience. It has been demanding, stressful, confusing, scary, exciting, rewarding, insightful, and most of all one of the greatest learning experiences of my expedition in life.