English 10 – Looking Back
By Peter M. Johnson

     The time I’ve spent teaching tenth grade English during this internship has been very beneficial to my teaching skill. I had a number of ideas coming into this situation. Some of them were useful and some of them were not. I learned a lot of new ideas and some of them worked better than others as well. My store of teaching knowledge has definitely grown and I have a much better idea of how to use strategies to my benefit and the benefit of the classroom.
.     My management skills have grown as well. Coming into the intern experience I thought that I would be able to give my students free range of movement and work with them in and authoritative setting. I’ve found that it is helpful to the entire classroom if you establish framework that allows you to direct students to engage what they need to be doing.
     The thing I would have to say I was the most unprepared for was the fact that there would be students who were going to be totally unresponsive. I believe that everyone has the potential to learn, but it certainly is hard to get some students traveling down that path. I’ve found that you have to weigh the benefit of getting that student working with the need for the entire class to move ahead. I certainly don’t want to marginalize anyone, but I don’t want to have to slow my classroom down for a single student.
     Teaching is fun, and my students find some way to convince me of this every day even if they don’t realize it. Often it becomes fun when I sit back and laugh at myself for doing things so stupidly. Sometimes they say the funniest things or write the funniest things. Sometimes I have fun just talking with them, they are people after all. This internship has done nothing but convince me that I want to teach and I’m going to enjoy it however hard it might be.