Observing A Cooperating Teachers

Teacher candidates learn best by actually experiencing and learning hands on in the classroom. Being able to observe a host teacher and watch the organization, preparation, management, and all the different strategies they use in the classroom is a great way for teacher candidates to learn. These experiences that teacher candidates observe, are helpful in which these strategies will be used in the teacher candidate’s classroom someday. Observing the different learning styles of students and the differentiated instruction applied by the host teacher is important for the teacher candidates to take in to understand the diverse classroom needs. Observing a cooperating teacher is an experience that every teacher candidate should experience as it

Having that one on one time with a cooperating teacher allows teacher candidates to go behind the scenes of a normal lesson and see the planning and preparation teachers have to do to be able to teach a productive lesson. Many classrooms have a mixed variety of students, many with learning disabilities or IEPs. Many of the students with special needs or learning disabilities have different lessons and work then the other students in the classroom. “special education refers to ‘services and supports that teachers provide to meet the needs of students who are identified with disabilities’” (Parkay, 2016). It was observed that many students in the class had special needs or learning disabilities. These students received extra help, were pulled out of the classroom for certain subjects to work with special education teachers, and other received different types of work. The host teacher had to plan and prepare the different kind of work for the different kinds of students in the classroom. Observing and listening to the cooperating teacher explain how basically two lesson plans are being created for the students. Seeing how the cooperating teacher created lesson plans that worked for the different needs of every student was something that could not be learned any other way then experiencing it

Observing the cooperating teacher gave the teacher candidate to physically see one way a classroom is ran. Every teacher has their own set of rules, their own policy, their own way of how students should answer a question or how they should ask to go to the bathroom. Observing a host teacher allowed the teacher candidate to get some insight on what management and rule style worked for the classroom. It was observed that students would hold one finger in the air to ask to go to the bathroom. It was also observed that in order for students to answer a question they would raise their hand and say a specific phrase that the host teacher wanted the students to say before answering the question. Classroom management also includes how the organization of the day runs. Observing the host teacher, the teacher candidate observed that the host teacher chose the schedule for the day. The placement of subjects throughout the day were placed based off of the host teachers experience of what subjects were absorbed by the students best at specific times during the day. Different classroom management styles, along with different layouts and organization of things in the classroom was observed by the teacher