Losing Steam

I’ve only been student teaching for a little over three weeks and I’ve already reverted to traditional teaching methods. It’s not like I did anything crazy at first, but I did try different strategies. I used powerpoint, then worksheets, I had students work on mini white boards in pairs, I used think-pair-share, and I made them answer conceptual questions and think about problems without much background information. Since they’ve taken their quiz in the middle of last week and I realized how little they learned, and since they had a requiz that took up two days, I feel like I have been spending all my time trying to get them back on track. I have an expectation that I will get them through one section every two days. That is the guideline that my CT (cooperating teacher) gave to me at the beginning of student teaching when I asked him about pacing. While he has not held me to it or said anything critical about my pacing, I feel pressure to get through as much material as possible. In order to catch them up to my CT’s class (which is really only one day ahead), I’m lecturing, assigning more homework, and letting them work on homework in class so they get practice while there is a teacher on hand to answer questions. I find it extremely boring and life-sucking. It’s often what students expect in math, and they respond to it well enough, but I don’t enjoy it at all.

Writing about it makes me realize that the main thing keeping me from trying new teaching strategies is that I’m afraid my students will get behind. I want to prove myself, and to me that means keeping my students on the same time schedule as my CT’s class. I don’t have any solutions, but noticing that I’m in the way of delivering creative lessons is a big lesson in itself.