I had a very poor experience as student teacher, and ended up being asked to leave.

The teacher taught math the way I wouldn't dream of teaching - power points, procedures and lots of problems for practice. I tried to teach in a way where the students discovered how to do things themselves, to use Think Pair Share and the like, but they got confused because my way was so different from his. He also felt threatened evidently by my very different methods (which actually got some of the remedial math kids interested, where drill left them cold.) He was also afraid of students' state test scores going down with my methods.

The head of my department went along with him, although my college advisor knew what was going on.

After that it was very hard to find anything.

I'm not sure what should have been the procedure, but there should have been a better matching between master teacher and student teacher.

I then got to teach (paid) one month at a charter school an hour from home - until they fired me for an untold reason, but have now completed the observations teaching at another very difficult charter school in the same area. Unfortunately in a little school colleagues are often over-burdened (and I'm the only science teacher anyway.) My advisor tried to be encouraging but mostly I've had to go it alone. The school's advisor is the special ed teacher, who also wears many hats there, since we don't have a prinicipal or counselor!

Probably those who teach in small school like I do could really use some help.

For science I discovered email lists through the NSTA, which have been invaluable!

Bonnie Yelverton