A (Fri)Day in the Life of a Student Teacher
My workday starts at 6:55 am when I pull into the faculty parking lot. There are pickup trucks, parked in a circle around smoke in the field behind the middle school. I later find out this is because the FFA smokes meat for a fundraiser every year. It’s dark and quiet as I get ready for my day. When the students come in, all hell breaks loose. I try to greet each one by name but get lost as the begin to make their demands: Can I go to the bathroom? Do I have ice cream money? When is lunch? Luke (all names are pseudonym) comes in hot. He is hard to redirect away from the window, but we can’t just let him watch the busses all day. He throws himself on the floor in the fetal position and begins screaming bloody murder. I have to get someone to watch my class so that I can pick him up by his armpits and get him out of the room so he can calm down. This happened the day before, too. And after I removed him, another student, Ethan (who hi...