Holly-

I can completely understand your frustration with not having any student teaching experience yet…however, I hope you do not think that your enrollment in this class is untimely and may have better served you at the end of your NYU studies! First, I have been longing for this type of curriculum design class since I began one year ago! I can tell you that it DEFINITELY would have helped me tremendously to have this experience prior to beginning my classroom teaching.

Furthermore, beginning this process of researching as an educator is and will continue to be helpful to us at all stages of our education careers.  If anything, you have a jump start on beginning to reflect, analyze and study your own experiences in the classroom.  From your first day at your placement, you will already be aware of certain methodologies that are (or are obviously NOT) put into practice.  Developing this type of mentality as a reflective practitioner will only enrich your student teaching placement further…

Lastly, I still am not certain what a “best practice” is…and I had an entire student teaching course centered around presenting “best practices” to the class! This class has actually helped my understanding of a best practice, because I now realize that “best practice” is a loose and somewhat gray term. How are these best practices established and developed…through research!

Chin up!

Kate