Throughout the course of the year, Ames High receives many student teachers. There are a couple of good ones, but most of them have no idea what they are doing. It’s not their fault, they are new to teaching. However, their errors in teaching should not affect the unfortunate students who have them. Most teachers who have a student teacher will guide them, but when there is confusion, teachers tend to just sit back and leave the students to figure it out themselves. Last time I checked, students teaching themselves is not how school is supposed to work. Teachers are supposed to be teaching their students the material that they will be tested on.

It’s great that Ames High has so many student teachers so that they can improve and become better teachers, but to what extent? If a student teacher is teaching a class and the class average on tests drops dramatically, the students can’t be blamed for that. Some students may not have studied, but there could also be an issue with the teaching. When tests averages do drop when there is a student teacher, many teachers just say “it was a hard unit.” Was it really a hard unit, or was the unit just not taught correctly?

The tests that are given during the reign of a student teacher should either become easier, or be rewritten to accommodate for the bad teaching. I’m not saying that each test should become a breeze, but it should cover the material that the student teacher actually covered. By making the tests easier, each students grade could be more easily attained like it would be if the actual teacher was teaching the new material. Or, one could hope for a good student teacher. Either way, students should be given the opportunity to succeed and not be screwed over from the start.