Ah, Chemistry

For the last week, I have been a student teacher in a high school Chemistry class on the South side of Chicago. There is one other student teacher with me. In the spirit of focusing on this new community's assets, not its deficits, I will list all of the things that are great about the class and the merits of this being my first teaching experience:

• I don't think there are any gang issues in the class
• The students understand the strict attendance policy (if you miss more than 1 day, you can no longer attend. Being more than 15 minutes late counts as an absence)
• The students generally treat the teacher and us student teachers with respect
• The teacher had almost all of the students during the year at this school, so they have some level of comfort with the material (even though they failed)
• My mentor teacher gives supportive feedback after we lead a lesson
• The teacher really wants the students to pass his class

Unfortunately, a lot of the other interns do not have all of these luxuries. I have already heard stories of gang violence, ridiculously low standards, and inappropriate yelling by and at students. While I do wish that some things were different - I haven't looked at Chemistry in years, and teaching 38 students is nearly impossible - I am happy that I am in a generally-positive learning environment.
I did get to lead my first lesson on Tuesday. Dan (the other intern) and I taught for the whole four hours. We covered a lot of material, including atomic theory history, atomic structure, graphing skills, isotopes, and periodic table reading. It is very nerve-wracking to stand at the front of the class and keep tabs on so many things: the time, class attentiveness, writing neatly, not saying "like" or "um," knowing when to call on a student or cold-call or ask the whole class, gauging when everyone is lost or everyone is getting it, having a useful example of any possible question in the back of your mind...
I take my students' successes and failures very personally. I cannot tell if this will help or hinder my abilities as a teacher yet, but being a perfectionist is something I can't change about myself, at least yet. The class attitude is very temperamental; one girl said this week that I was treating her "like a little kid," but the very next day, a student asked for me specifically to help her with a worksheet because she likes how I explain tricky concepts. It's crazy how self-conscious the first situation made me, and how elated I was to hear the latter. This makes me realize that my students, who have probably faced was more hardship than I, must also take what I and other teachers say very personally. Therefore, I have been trying to give very directed praise to students - I pulled one boy who is usually very quiet aside and told him that I really appreciated how much he had been participating all morning, and that it was a pleasure to hear his ideas.
As much as I want to complain about it, though, I actually really enjoy teaching. I have definitely learned more in the last week during student teaching than I have in all of the seminars, orientations, meetings and classes I have had through ICTC and Northwestern. Every day, I get more and more excited about teaching my own classes that fit topics I actually like in the fall.
I think I will turn out to be a pretty good teacher after all :)