There’s good and bad taking over a classroom from a person who is leaving the teaching profession.
- Good: You get all the cool stuff they leave because they don’t plan on using it again.
- Bad: You have to go through all the crap you’ll never use to get to the good stuff.
I spent a few hours up at school today going through my new classroom and finally got all the crap I don’t want out of there, and organized the stuff I’m keeping. Feels good to have that taken care of.
I also met with my student-teacher for next year. I’m part of a program through the University of Utah that pays math-teachers-to-be to spend an entire year with a mentor teacher. She will be there from day-1, for 2 of my classes, until the last day of school. It’s a gradual release program, at first she will just be there observing me as I set up the classroom expectations and procedures. Once things get going, she will start interacting more and more with the class; assisting me, co-teaching, teaching mini-lessons, taking over a whole class here and there, going solo, until the the last term where she will take over every aspect, just like a regular student-teacher.
I really wish all student teaching included the beginning of the school year, I certainly wish I had gone through this kind of program. It took me a really horrible first year of teaching to realize the importance of the expectations and procedures set up at the beginning of the school year.
