A Grace College student who had her student teaching experience interrupted by the Coronavirus crisis and Jan Knoop, an adjunct professor at the college, are quoted in a story on the news site, Chalkboard. A portion of the story appears below. Click here to read the complete article.
Indiana student teachers were ‘getting their feet under them.’ Then coronavirus hit.
A few days after the coronavirus crisis closed the school building where Micaela Box is a student teacher, Box decided to write 23 letters — one for each of her fourth-grade students at Lincoln Elementary in Warsaw, Indiana. Included in each one was her favorite memory with them.
The Grace College senior, who was 10 weeks into her 16 weeks of student teaching when the building shuttered, said she wrote the letters because she won’t be able to hug her first class of students goodbye. But also because she was worried about a couple of students who weren’t logging in for e-learning or joining class video conferences.
“The hardest part, for me, is not seeing them,” said Box. It came as a relief when two of her students wrote back.
Student teachers’ last opportunity to practice leading a class was either cut short or switched to e-learning, where their interactions with students are limited and some projects they had planned are impossible. Meanwhile, coronavirus closures have complicated their path to earning a teaching license and finding a job for the fall — fallout that some worried would worsen the state’s teacher shortage. …
The biggest loss, professors say, is missing the end of the school year, which is a critical time for the state’s thousands of student teachers. For many, it’s when they are allowed to take over a class entirely, following weeks of working with a mentor teacher and building relationships with students.
“It was about the time that they were getting their feet under them and they were developing a real confidence that, ‘I can do this,’” said Jan Knoop, an adjunct professor at Grace College. “That’s when all of this hit, and it was a rather abrupt ending.” …
For her part, Box had been working as the lead teacher before her school closed — slowly taking over teaching responsibilities one subject at a time. But she has stepped back into a supporting role as lessons moved online.
“This is just a great example of how flexible you need to be as a teacher,” Box said. “I’m hoping this will never happen again, but I’m glad I’ve gotten to experience this as a student teacher to learn how to deal with this and still know how to classroom manage.”
Click here to read the complete article.