Every education student at Drake University has to do practicum experiences to experience what a classroom environment is like before going on to student teach. During these practicum visits, an aspiring educator can really learn a lot, as it is their first time stepping into a classroom as a teacher instead of a student. 

I have completed my practicum hours and have been captivated by the transition from learning how to be a teacher to seeing it performed before me. It’s moments like those where I can really see myself being a teacher once I graduate. 

The experiences I have had in a real classroom have taught me far more than anything in a college class. Because professors can’t teach you everything. Even though I’ve only completed two of my four years, I think I’ve learned the most from the classroom experiences I’ve been a part of than I could have from any lecture.

I’ve completed 80 hours of in-class experiences, and I have actually seen what I’ve learned on campus used in real life. It has made me realize that everything I’m learning in class is something I will use in my career, which I hadn’t expected. I had often found myself wondering if any of it would be useful in the field. But there are some things that college classrooms don’t teach you, like how to actually get control of a classroom or how to protect your voice after yelling for eight hours a day.  

You also learn how to handle serious situations when you get into a classroom that, in theory, you know how to handle. You’re taught the correct ways to handle certain situations, but you never really know what you’ll do or how you’ll react when it actually happens. 

I have seen a lot in the two practicums I have completed, but that pales in comparison to what my mentor teachers have seen in their years of experience. I saw things ranging from major behavioral issues to blatant cheating. I once caught a student cheating using AI and I was at a loss for words. I knew that I had to do something, but I was at a loss.

I did not know how to react to any of it. I’ve been given so many hypotheticals in class, and yet I continuously found myself at a loss when faced with these situations in practicum. 

The best part was that after that class let out, my mentor teacher came over and talked to me about how to handle this type of thing in the future. Not because I had handled it wrong, but because next time it happens, I’ll be the teacher.

Those situations still come into my mind now and then when I think about how much I have learned from my in-class experiences. I went to class the next day and took notes like I always did, listened to the lecture and participated in activities. But in the back of my mind, I kept thinking about that day, when everything I had learned didn’t matter. At the end of the day, my classes won’t teach me everything I need to know to be a great teacher.

The only way I can be a great teacher is to take my classes with me into the real world and learn as I go. I can’t expect myself to be the perfect teacher right out of the gate. I realized that day that I will never be prepared for everything, and how could I be? Our classes can’t teach us how to handle every single situation we may face as teachers, because new ones are popping up every day.

Trends change, students change and the only thing that doesn’t change is how utterly unprepared we will be when faced with a problem for the first time. But it’ll get better as I go. That’s all teaching is, really — teaching and learning all rolled into one. I will never be prepared for everything, but I can learn and adapt as things come up.