Professor Sharon

Every spring semester I teach the student teaching class.  This involves a two and a half hour weekly class seminar, plus regular visits to the field where student teachers are working 12 – 15 hours a week in a early care and education setting.

I generally keep the placements nearby to the college to keep the transportation time and costs down.  But, on occasion a student will ask for some setting a bit further away, and so it is this semester.  About 24 miles away, there’s a branch of a local, privately owned childcare business, and one student requested it.  I thought it would be a good fit, and so approved it.  Due to the crazy snow days schedule this late winter, I finally got there for my first observation of her work with the toddlers this week!

She’s doing fine – and long story, short – this is a good thing.  The funny thing was that unbeknownst to me, her supervising teacher is an alum of my classes, as is the site director (which I did know).  And, as I was leaving there was another young woman coming in to be a sub for the day who is currently in my classes!  She said to me, “I told you that you should come visit this place!”

I guess in my years of pre-service training I’ve made some inroads into putting teachers and caregivers out there who are taking care of my community’s young!  I hope it has worked out well for those children they are care for – I’ve certainly worked really hard to see that the students in my classes are worthy of the work of caring for our youngest citizens.

It was a good visit.