In the end, things with my student teacher worked out pretty great: she left and I got my classroom back.
But before she left, things also worked out well. See, I took a week off for paternity leave, and had to make no sub plans or grade work from while I was out–she did it all. That was super sweet. And then the week when I came back was her last four days, but we had a big snowstorm so we only had school on her last day and she brought donuts.
She was still very excited about her cool ideas and told me as much, there on our last day leading up to her last minutes: playing meditative music during silent reading time keeps the students so focused; she wasn’t comfortable with my discipline plan but doesn’t yet have one of her own; she still has in her mind a daily rotation of activities starting with freewriting, with Fridays being a writing workshop day.
I smiled and nodded and gave her the enthusiastic letter of recommendation I’d written for her and she left and I felt much better.
Later she emailed me this: “It was a pleasure to get to work in your classroom this semester. Thank you so much for accommodating me and some of my crazier suggestions. Your feedback and support throughout the process were extremely helpful, and I’m pretty sure your paternity leave gave me the most authentic teaching experience I will have while student teaching….”
