A Lesson About Past Actions While Trying to Ignore Present Ones As Recounted By Mohamed

Today my second year students started their student teaching. I saw one of my students this evening and he recounted this story of his day at the school:

"While the mentor-teacher was in the room the class was good and the students behaved appropriately. Everything was going all right and the interaction between the students and the teacher was good. The students followed directions and they listened to the instructions.

The student teacher’s lesson was wonderful. The topic of the day was "past actions." He explained the directions first in the beginning of the class. For example, he said that the students don’t need to say, “Teacher, me” but instead can just raise their hands and they will all be called. Throughout the lesson the students behaved responsibly.

The student teacher used the blackboard very well to demonstrate the vocabulary. The   word “childhood” was written on the board. Then the student teacher divided it into two words and asked the class, “Do you know the word child?” “No,” the students responded. “Do you know the word children?” The students said, “Yes!” The student teacher added, “So children is the plural of the word child, and then childhood is the term to describe the state of being a child.” The students all nodded and understood the term.

Less than one hour before the end of school day, at 13:00, the mentor-teacher announced that she was leaving the room. Not more than ten minutes after she left, the class turned upside down. When the mentor teacher left, she took the students with her, substituting 40 devils in their place. Students started talk wildly, grab each other’s clothes, and endlessly  commented on Turkish television series. One girl event insulted the student teacher’s lab jacket (which he is required to wear), saying, “He thinks of himself as a doctor!” All of the students were laughing.

The student teacher could not finish the production stage of the lesson. Things were unbearable and the student teacher looked forward for the time of class to be over. In the midst of the craziness, the student teacher sat down, and started correcting the students’ papers. He later said that he deliberately chose to ignore the students’ noise explaining that, “I shut my eyes so that the students wouldn’t even know that I saw them and the way that they were acting.” He added that he knew that there was no way to control the students so he decided to focus on helping the few students in the front of the room who wanted to learn. 

Finally, the end of the class arrived but not before the students took away the young teacher’s soul."