Student Teaching during COVID-19: My Experience

Written by Jack Levinson, Class of 2021

Hi, everyone! I’m Jack Levinson, a senior music education major. In this blog post, I’d like to share my experiences being a student teacher during the COVID-19 pandemic. I hope that anyone reading this article will get a sense of both the successes and challenges that can come about teaching during these unusual circumstances.

The weeks before I began student teaching were filled with anticipation. There were many things I was looking forward to being able to experience, but alongside that, I had my share of doubts and concerns. When I received my email with my placement back from the department heads, I was glad to find out that I would be placed in an elementary school, just like I had asked for in my interview. Once I knew which school district I would be in, I decided to research the district and get a feel for the school’s culture and demographics. I learned that my district was considered “Future Ready”, meaning that the school provides all students with technology-based, student-centered learning experiences. I also learned that all students in the district are provided Chromebooks as part of their “Future Ready” certification. This was helpful for me to know as I began to create weekly lesson plans, which I will elaborate on later.

I initially was placed with a different cooperating teacher than the one I was originally assigned to. Due to teacher transfers, my new cooperating teacher was placed into a school entirely unfamiliar to her. I believe she had been teaching at her old school for almost ten years. With the knowledge that this year would be quite unpredictable, I wanted to be as prepared as I could for my first week. I scrambled to type up sample lesson plans and create lists of potential activities before the first day of school. Skimming through my old notes from Foundations and Elementary Methods, I left no pile of papers untouched as I tried to relearn everything I hadn’t retained. A few days before the first day of school, I typed up a panic email to my cooperating teacher in the hopes she would respond with suggestions how to prepare. I was terrified of showing up and being useless. When she responded, I received a short message along the lines of “Don’t worry, we’ll talk about it during our first week of school.”

I never considered that my cooperating teacher and I were in the same boat — we both were unsure of what the new school year would look like for us. This was essentially the first lesson I learned as a student teacher: Don’t create extra stress for yourself. There’s truly nothing worse than feeling overwhelmed, so I decided to follow my cooperating teacher’s lead and wait until we knew more about what the school was like. I immediately felt better when I allowed myself to go with the flow.

September 1st was my first official day of school as a student teacher. I arrived at the school, walked through the front doors, and had my temperature checked. The principal greeted my cooperating teacher and I warmly and showed us to her new office. It turned out our office was barely an office. It was, in fact, the wing of a stage in the gymnasium. My cooperating teacher was understandably disappointed but didn’t hesitate to make herself comfortable. Once we were settled in, we attended several department meetings over Google Meet. We learned all “specials” classes would be taught in video form asynchronously, while general education classes would be taught in a hybrid environment.

Even though I was unhappy to learn I would not get to work with my co-op and her students in her own classroom, I decided to look on the positive side of things. I knew my way around technology and had a bunch of websites that I would be able to use in my lessons. My co-op also had the support of the other elementary teachers in the district that she could discuss her concerns with. We actually decided on planning out the sequence of videos for the semester with the input of the other elementary teachers. Myself, my co-op and another music teacher were responsible for creating videos to be sent out to all eleven elementary schools in the district. In a similar way to how I would be student teaching before the pandemic, I would plan and record videos for a couple grades at a time, gradually adding on a new grade per week. Eventually, I was planning and recording videos for all grades, from kindergarten to fifth grade.

Creating video-based music lessons presented both challenges and benefits. There were ample opportunities for me to be highly creative and think out of the box. Students at home wouldn’t have instruments or materials, and of course would have to learn without the presence of a teacher to support them. I designed my lessons with these limitations in mind, and created almost all of them using a Chrome extension called Screencastify. This extension allows the user to record their webcam embedded in a recording of your screen. I used Google Slides to display the lesson content while I sang, moved, and played music as the lesson saw fit. It was a lot of fun creating visually appealing lessons, although time-consuming. Over the course of the semester, I collected a lot of various books, songs, and teaching approaches that my co-op shared with me. Although I used these materials in an asynchronous manner, I could still hold onto them and repurpose them in later lessons. I was able to perfect my “teacher presence” through my video lessons as well. I had to “amplify” my personality so that students could stay engaged while watching my pre-recorded video.

While I eventually enjoyed the process of planning, recording, and editing videos during my student-teaching experience, I struggled with a few things. Making videos was often exhausting. I was highly critical of my videos and had to record segments with tiny mistakes three or four times over so they would be perfect. I later learned how to recover from saying the wrong thing or flubbing words so that the process became easier. I also found it difficult to properly assess students on their understanding of the concepts I was teaching them. Less than 20 percent of students in the district completed the Flipgrid and Edpuzzle assignments I assigned. It was disappointing for me to learn about this, but I kept making videos knowing that there were students out there that would stay engaged.

In the middle of the semester, my co-op and I actually got the chance to teach our lessons by traveling classroom to classroom. Previously, the only chance we would have to interact with students was when we would supervise them during their “wellness break.” This was a 20-minute period where students went outside to take their masks off, eat a snack or do a P. E. activity. (I found myself in the role of gym teacher quite a lot!) While in the classroom, I could display my video or my Google Slides and teach more or less normally. I am so grateful I was able to teach at least a couple times in a classroom — many of my peers could only teach virtually over the fall semester.

My student teacher experience showed me that going with the flow and staying positive despite the circumstances can turn a depressing situation into a rewarding one. It is not an easy feat to shift my perspective on having to teach during a pandemic, and I certainly have not missed out on any of the stress. However, I am grateful that I had a cooperating teacher who guided the way for me and supported me while I gained further insight on how to be a successful elementary music teacher. I’ll sign off with something a little cheesy. For those of you who will begin your student teaching journeys soon: let your passion be your purpose. You may feel overwhelmed at times, but you have the power in you to be the best teacher you can be. We’re all in this together, and your efforts make this world a little brighter!