During fall of 2020, I spent 13 weeks student teaching in a virtual learning environment. I taught Integrated Math 2 during the student teaching process. I was placed at the high school I attended and had the opportunity to work with a wonderful mentor teacher. Due to the safety protocols in our district, I was not able to work in the classroom with my mentor teacher and did my student teaching from home. Although this was not the student teaching experience I was expecting during my credential program, I am still so grateful for the experience.
My Setup
Since I was student teaching from home, I had to develop a mini classroom for myself to work in. Thankfully, my parents graciously loaned me the alcove in their room to teach from and use as my "classroom." My laptop did not want to work with our Wi-Fi and regularly kicked me out of video calls, so I had to borrow my mom's laptop to stay connected to my classes. I used an old TV that my parents had recently replaced as my second monitor so I could keep my Google Meet window open on a bigger screen. This made it easier for me to see my students and made sure I could see them even if I was working with other tabs on the laptop. I used a LogiTech USB camera that I got during my grad program to ensure that my video and audio quality was strong for each lesson. My mentor teacher loaned me a school document camera to use during my lessons. This was very helpful because it allowed me to show students exactly how to solve and write out the problems we were working on. In math, it is incredibly important to see how equations, proofs, and ratios are set up and how to show your work when solving a problem.
My mentor teacher and I would often talk to each other over text during lessons so we could communicate quickly and easily without disrupting the lesson. When I would need to record an observation, I would use my other laptop and USB camera to record from over my shoulder so my supervisor was able to see everything that I did when teaching a lesson. This meant that when I was doing a lesson observation, I usually had 4 screens going at once!
My Go To Apps
Since I had to teach math in a virtual environment, I had to get creative to ensure that the lessons I created were engaging. The school I worked at used G-Suite, so we used Google Meets for all of our virtual lessons. When we would do Document Camera based lessons, we often had students unmute to share how they solved problems and use the chat to share their solutions. We had the Nod - Reactions for Google Meet Extension which allowed us to do quick polls with our students during lessons and gave the students a way to raise their hand if they did not have their camera on. We would also use Google Forms to complete attendance/engagement checks during the lessons. We used a format that asked for name, class period, and what students were asked for. This let us pick different questions for students to solve and then share their answers in the Google Form. This was a quick check in to see who was paying attention, who understood the material, and who needed more support.
When I wasn't doing Document Camera based lessons, I was using Pear Deck to present the material. I loved using Pear Deck because students were able to actively engage and participate with the presentation throughout the lesson. I started using Pear Deck when I wanted to see student work in real time. We were working on triangle similarity and writing flowchart proofs to structure our reasoning. Pear Deck allowed me to get student responses in multiple ways (text boxes, number answers, drag and drop, multiple choice, etc.), but my favorite option was to use drawing slides. This allowed students to do their work directly on the slides and allowed me to see how they were solving the problems. Whenever we reviewed the solution to a problem, I would also give students a multiple choice slide so they could tell me if they were ready to move on, not ready to move on, or if they had a question. I also use the draggable feature in Pear Deck to end lessons with self-evaluations to help students reflect on their learning.
If I were in the classroom, I would have created a word wall for each chapter/unit to help students learn the lesson vocabulary. To make this happen in the virtual classroom, I created an interactive Google Slide presentation to act as our word wall. All of the terms were listed on the first slide of the presentation and linked to the specific slide with their definition and a visual of the word. I posted the slide presentations on Google Classroom at the start of each chapter/unit so students could refer to them throughout our lessons. I set the presentation up so that it would make a copy for each student so they could edit the slide presentation and take notes on it as needed.
During the last month of student teaching, I was teaching the Right Triangle Trigonometry unit. Students were introduced to Sine, Cosine, and Tangent and needed access to a scientific calculator to solve problems. About half of my students did not have access to a scientific calculator because they were not in the classroom. Thankfully, Desmos saved the day with their digital calculators. I was able to have my students use the Desmos Scientific calculator throughout their lessons, on homework, and on tests and quizzes to complete their needed Trig and Inverse Trig problems. This ensured that all of my students were able to solve the problems and gave me the opportunity to show them exactly how to use the calculator to solve the problems.
My Advice for Future Student Teachers
1. Be Flexible
I honestly did not expect to student teach virtually when I was going into this experience. I had to be flexible from day 1 to determine different ways to teach from home and make sure I can make engaging lessons for online learning. Being flexible with my lessons helped me stay sane during this experience and ensured that I could handle any challenge that came my way.
2. Be Reflective of Your Teaching
After each lesson I taught, I would discuss it with my mentor teacher and identify what went well and what could be fixed for future class periods. This was great because it gave me a second opinion on my lessons and helped me ensure that my lessons were at their best. This also helped with all of the reflections I had to write for my student teaching classes and helped me truly see how I was doing during my 13 weeks teaching.
3. Find Other Student Teacher Friends for Support
I was so lucky to have 7 other math student teachers going through student teaching with me. We did trainings and workshops together and had a group chat to support each other, ask questions, and share the experience with. It was great to have a group going through the same process to talk to. I was able to make great teacher friends during this process and have people to celebrate with when we passed our edTPA and completed student teaching.
4. Make Balance a Priority
From the start of student teaching, my mentor teacher told me that a work-life balance was key to my mental health as a teacher. Creating routine and balance for myself was one of my priorities during student teaching. I would use my prep periods to lesson plan and build lessons and assignments and work on my assignments for my student teaching classes. I had a hard time at the beginning balancing teaching, lesson planning, and the edTPA, but once I found a good work routine, I was able to ensure that I was done with my work around 4 so I could have time with family, chores, and actually get to sleep on time every night.
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