By Kendall Pritchard

Many students have sat a class taught by an inexperienced student teacher who brings countless awkward pauses into the lectures.

Sophomore Stefan Petrovic has gone through trials and tribulations when dealing with student teachers.

“When a student teacher is given an artificial sense of teaching superiority, it can take away from the learning experience,” Petrovic said.

The most frustrating thing when dealing with a student teacher is when he or she cannot physically connect with the classroom. We’ve all been in the classroom when a student teacher tries to crack a joke, and all you hear is crickets.

“It really just depends on the classroom’s personality, ” Petrovic said.

The question I continually ask myself is, do student teachers really benefit the students or just themselves?

During his first year student teaching Kevin Brady faced many obstacles while teaching his 11th grade history students for Fran Bartlett.

“Of course in the beginning I was nervous, but eventually throughout the semester the nervousness went away,” Brady said. “My biggest obstacle was trying to find what teaching style worked for me as well as my students.”

Student teachers need the time in the classroom to better themselves for their future students. However, how much control do you give a student teacher? How much knowledge is a student losing when an inexperienced 20-something-year-old takes over the veteran teachers reigns?

It’s a balancing act.

“The teacher should always have control over grading and instruction and leave the student teacher as the enforcer,” Petrovic said. “Unfortunately for the students, it all depends on the teacher.”

Junior Jensen Edwards can relate to Petrovic.

“They should just teach small lessons and not take over the entire classroom,” Edwards said. “My biggest pet peeve is when a student teacher takes complete charge of the students.”

It certainly doesn’t hurt the students to learn from a different perspective that student teachers can offer. Students change teachers seven times a day — surely one more can’t hurt.

It’s the lengths that student teachers are willing to go to that determine their classroom’s outcome. If a student teacher tries his best and brings his best knowledge to the table, the students are in the best hands and can only benefit.

“Some students may believe that the teachers work is done once school is over, but that isn’t the case for effective teachers,” Brady said. “Some days I wouldn’t leave for a couple extra hours after school was out, and I’d come to school around 6:30 a.m. just so that I could work more for my students.”

If it wasn’t for student teaching, where would the future of our teachers be? They need the in-class feel to thrive and see where they want to take their job for future students ahead.