Failing Student Teaching

My first set of mentor teachers sent off heated emails  to my credential advisor. They both said that I was confrontational,in  both letters. The credential advisor did not minimize this fact. By then, they let me go, with the personnnel officer asking for confirmation that I was out of the credential program.

This I learned following a meeting with the advisor and a suave and elitis director, one who seemed more interested in collecting accolades and climbing up the University administrative ladder.

Before this unhappy meeting, I had been confronted in a mafioso fashion by the two mentor teachers and my university supervisor, who was visibly upset, or at least invested in getting rid of me as soon as possible.

I had not done very well in the opinion of these staff members. I was not prepared for the onslaught that would follow, a quiet and subtle one, nearly violent in its condescension.

Earlier that afternoonr, they had requested that I sit in another room while the deliberated over my "mid-term" for student teaching. It was the afternoon, and I felt that I had nothing to worry about.

I walked back into the room when they had called me in. They sat down nice and quietly, one of the mentor teachers had his hands folded in front of him, the other teacher tried to force a smile. The university supervisor, dolled up with a new dye-job, was jumpy about the fact that she had arrived to the school about half an hour late. The brake had stalled on the car, she told me. I would doubt this story entirely by the end of this mid-term session.

First, the supversor, Mrs. R., asked me: "How do you think that you are doing?"

I told her the truth. I thought that I was doing much better than I had been at the beginning of the year. I had some rough patches, I did not trust one of the mentor teachers.

She and the other teachers then listed a series of concerns which revealed that they did not agree with my view of the situation at all. I had not met with the other mentor teachers enough, according the World History Teacher.

Mrs. R. pressed me on whether I had visited any other classes since I had met with her last time. I told her that I had not yet, that I needed more time. She asked me about other things that I was asked to do, which I had not done.

"We have parents complaining about you. You do not do what you are told. If I were the principal at this school, I would fire you!" She told me in blunt terms. She did not yell, but she was curt and to the point.

I could see that this meeting was not going the way that I though it would be going. This was not an evaluation, this was a severance, a dismissal.

"Your student teaching assignment is over. Turn in your books and get off the campus," the supervisor told me, this time with firm, condemning conviction.

Looking back on the even, I would have fired me, too. I was not fit for the job, especially in a school where staff did not know what was going on half the time, where the mentor teacher for the junior classes actually believed that it was best for me to take over the class the first day. I was not ready, not one bit. The whole system has been terrible for quite some time, and I am glad that now, I finally see that it was not just me, but it was them, too.

If I were a taxpayer in this state -- which I am -- I would fire every mentor teacher and academic who has deluded herself into believing that they are adequately training graduate students to become accomplished and polished educators. Nothing could be further from the truth. I was not prepared during the previous year, when I was taking courses to prepare for the student teaching assignment. I did pretty poorly at the two-day session way back in January, 2005. The mentor teacher whom I was assigned to at  Wilson High School never got  back to me. The dysfunction of dealing with teachers and administrators who never got back to me when I emailed them or contact them would come back to haunt me again and again throughout my teaching career. The lack of connection, of understanding, of help and assistance, the blame placed on the teacher, never on the student, never to the parent, only created an appalling vortex of confusion and losss which held me back from ever succeeding.

I was devastated. I had no program, no credential, no real desire to do anything besides sit and sulk, but the overwhelming fear of years gone began to eat at me again. I was lost and alone in the world, having no idea what I was supposed to be doing in this life. I was flowing through life with no idea what I was supposed to be doing. I even wandered the campus briefly at the site where I had been summarily terminated. I found myself doubting myself constantly, unsure as to what I should be thinking, convinced that I was supposed to live this life on my own, frustrated because one more thing had gotten in the way, preventing me from going out to live my life on my own.

There had to be a better way to get through. There had to be something better than what I was expected to put up with as a student-teacher. At the time, I was pressed on all sides to grow up and do something, to make the most of some very difficult times and outcomes.

Looking back once again on that terrible era, I lived in fear for a long time. I find that I was trying to do and to be something that simply was not me, and I nearly got lost and died in the process. I have life, now, something definite which I did not have before. Yet those days, trying to make sense of a world that was scary and untrustworthy, trusting only my wits, and yet finding that even my wits were not trustworthy -- all of this was a daunting challenge to me.