Practicum

My teacher practicum was not something that my life experience up until that point could have prepared me for. I’d experienced stress and mental exhaustion during my first degree, I’d experienced physical exhaustion during tests of athletic endurance, I’d experienced emotional turmoil living in remote communities, but I had never before experienced them all rolled together; and I had certainly never before experienced it with the education of 90 adolescents at stake. Prior to practicum the consequence of my failure, lack of planning or general mistakes had always been personal consequences. It would mean I failed a test, or didn’t get a job, or had to redo an experiment, but I bore the consequences of my actions. During my teaching practicum however the consequence of my actions was the education and scientific engagement of 90 tenth and eleventh graders. I could not, and would not allow these students to lose their passion for science on my watch. Any doubts I had had about teaching, or my ability to manage a classroom melted away, and my sole focus became the success of my students. It was an eerie calm that settled over me. All the blood, sweat and tears demanded by my practicum were a small price to pay if it meant connecting with my students and helping them navigate the rocky waters of adolescence and balancing chemical equations. For the first time in my life, I had found something worth working towards, I had found a profession that I was passionate about. My practicum was not smooth, nor without incident, but it was a wonderfully exhausting experience that was worth every stress filled hour of planning, marking and revising. I was able to gain some feedback from my students and overal they seem to have felt the same way, that our journey together was a positive one, even though there were challenges that we had to work through together.