Patience

So what do you do as a student teacher when you are ready to teach but your mentor is still holding your hand and trying to ease you into it? Most people start teaching after a few days, I'm on day 8 and I may not teach anything until day 12. Besides being bored, I'm not learning much from observing, except students' names. I'm grateful for the support because I would not have been able to just be thrown into it, but some sort of work with the students would be nice now. I think I am just going to start jumping in where I see opportunity. It's not that I am not doing anything. I planned an activity to go with a movie and I've helped with research and other planning, but I'm waiting for Mr. H. to catch up where he told me to start and it is taking a great deal longer than planned. By my observations this is for two reasons: 1) poor planning and 2) not great classroom management. He thinks up what he is going to do just before he does it most times which is a privilege of being a veteran teacher, but it doesn't really work for him. The activity I planned was for a movie they were watching that day, so it's a good thing I came up with something. He also gives breaks without time limits and just waits for people to wander back in. He doesn't seem to expect much from most of his students and he gets exactly what he expects. He is a good coach, but coaching is not all there is to teaching. He also uses the same strategies and assignments repeatedly. I understand the need for routine, but this is pushing the limits for kids who are already bored to begin with. If you are going to lecture or read from the book, at least use a PowerPoint for visual stimulation or some sort of movement. (At least that's my theory.) Oh well, I'll take over a couple classes soon and we'll see how they respond to a different method that still gets the point across.