Ups and downs of student teaching

By Jazmine Heredia

Fred Martinez is a student teacher here at Yerba Buena High school, Covid has made his experience a little different. This school year has been far from normal. We have different safety precautions and classrooms look very different as of late. Online school has also been on many people's minds. Although we have heard a lot about how students and teachers are feeling this year, we haven't heard much from student teachers. We haven't heard how this may be affecting them. From masks making it hard to remember kids faces and voices to worrying about going back to online school.

Martinez- “Yes you could do stuff online but it's a lot harder to get class engagement on there. And sometimes some students may not feel as motivated. So trying to get them motivated.”

Even without the worry about going back to online classes and how to keep students engaged during them, safety is also a huge worry. With the recent breakout of the omicron variety of Covid those worries have only grown.

Martinez- “The one thing that worried me was not even teaching, but being in a room with people.”

Worrying about online school and how to keep kids intrigued and motivated if online classes were to resume has been an entire new struggle in itself.

The struggles did not just start when he began teaching. One of Martinez's major setbacks happened before he knew where he would be teaching.

Martinez-“One of my setbacks was when we started the student teaching program there's three semesters. The first semester is just classes, the last two semesters are student teaching. When we finished our first semester we were told that we would get our placements between January and August. Everyone got their placements and then I was still the only one. I didn't get my placement until a week before school started. Before high school started for YB and before I could even find a placement I was kinda thinking like should I even wait another year.

Not all has been bad though. His experience teaching here at YB in-person has been better than he expected. Despite not being in a high school since he graduated, the students have been great.

Martinez-“Great actually great, I'm not gonna lie when I first started I was super duper nervous.”

Despite Covid still being a huge factor and worry, this year having school be in-person has helped Martinez feel a lot more comfortable with teaching. He has been able to keep the students engaged and interested.

Martinez- “Teaching online is hard and the fact that it's in person kinda made me a little happy, a little more normal.”