Blog Post 2 - Letting Go and Empowering Students

             One of the biggest struggles I have encountered this student teaching semester has been finding the balance between having too much control and doing two much work and letting go of two much control and doing too little.

Jumping into student teaching, I wanted to do whatever I could to make sure my students would succeed and all get A’s in my class, especially during my unit. I was devastated when I received only five found poems for our first assignment. I sat there racking my brain trying to figure out what I did wrong. Did I not explain the assignment well enough? Did my students not get it? Was the assignment too hard? After talking to my CT, we came up with scaffolding and ideas to make the explanation of assignments better. Robyn Jackson says in “Never Work Harder Than Your Students,” teachers in this situation often default to compensating for students lack of responsibility by taking complete control. I was determined not to do this, and I had a great mentor by my side to help ensure I would not fall into this trap.

  Later in the semester, I was receiving the same missed questions on the learning logs. Students were not making connections to the themes in the text. Instead, they were explaining the quote. I noticed that on the learning log, it asked them how the motifs and symbols supported the theme, but not to identify the specific theme. I immediately changed the learning logs to reflect what I wanted from students. The next class I had students work collaboratively to look over their past graded learning logs. They discussed the most commonly missed sections and comments that were made by me. They then used this information to complete their next learning logs together. The result was learning logs that were complete and met all of my objectives.

Jackson’s article hits this point as well. Instead of me lecturing about what I wanted from students, I did my part and let students do theirs as well. As opposed to one group being in control, I transformed my classroom into “a community of learners.” It was extremely important that I worked with my students, not for my students. Jackson states, “Our job is to help our students find their own voices and develop their own understanding of the subject matter.” By giving students their own voices, and control of their learning, they were able to not only learn from their past mistakes, but work as a community to meet the learning objectives.

I can’t pretend that student teaching has been a breeze. I have made plenty of mistakes. But those mistakes, just like the mistakes of my students, have fueled my learning. They have enabled me to come up with solutions that work for me, and work for my students. They have forced me to be reflective and think critically. I know even when I enter my first year of teaching, I will continue to make mistakes. But those mistakes, as I use them to grow, will make me a better teacher and a better learner.