What It’s Like to be a Student-Teacher Over Zoom

Marist Education Students on their (Entirely Virtual) Hands-On Experience 

This semester, some education majors at Marist are student teaching entirely virtually, rather than in the classroom. Source: Gabriel Benois via Unsplash

In their senior year, education majors at Marist College prepare to teach in a classroom for the first time. They spent the previous years completing fieldwork hours, where they assisted in classrooms throughout the Hudson Valley — but never taught on their own. 

For students specializing in childhood education, the second semester of their senior year is dedicated to teaching an entire elementary class, developing every lesson, everyday.

But this year, student-teaching hasn’t panned out in the way some students expected. While some are able to teach physically in the classroom, others aren’t. 

Sienna Mullady ‘21 is a student-teacher at Vassar Road Elementary School in Wappingers Falls and has been entirely remote since starting in February. While the majority of students in her elementary class are in-person, she and seven of her students attend class virtually.

“I have been teaching every single subject since I started in February,” Mullady said. “And I’ve been doing it all from home on my computer.” At her off-campus apartment in Fox Run — where the WiFi is often unreliable — Mullady shares her screen through Google Meet with students, teaching everything from reading and writing to science and math. 

Haley Turecek ‘21 is also an education major completing her student-teaching hours this semester. She said teaching math online has proven to be the most difficult. All but two of her students are in the classroom, seated six feet apart with plexiglass shields around their desks, watching her teach lessons through Google Meet. Teaching lessons like subtraction on a screen without being able to walk through the steps on a whiteboard has been quite the challenge.

“It’s already a difficult concept for them to get. It’s hard not being able to write it down and show them exactly how to do it,” Turecek said. “I ended up having to make animations on my Google Slides trying to simulate walking through the steps. It took me way longer than expected but I wanted them to be able to understand it.”

Student-teachers like Turecek and Mullady are not able to be in the classroom, walking among the students and helping them with their work. “Sometimes you can tell that they're not understanding it. I wish I could just go next to them and point to their paper, or underline something, or even write my own example right there,” Turecek said. “But obviously I can't jump through the screen.”

In addition to the strange teaching model, it’s difficult to create a meaningful relationship with students. “I have seven students who are fully remote, and I’ve gotten to know them very well because we have our own morning meeting everyday,” Mullady said. “But there are some students I only see some days and I definitely don’t know them as well.”

Despite the challenges of teaching remotely, student-teachers are still gaining the valuable experience they require before becoming full-time teachers. Many students’ fieldwork hours in the fall and last spring were cancelled. “I really didn't get a lot of the experience that I was supposed to get before,” Mullady said. Now, they’re jumping right into teaching elementary school classes. “I've never taught or planned this many lessons before.” 

One positive outlook is that rather than standing in front of a room of 25 young students for their first time teaching, these seniors are easing into it. The webcam is directed at the entire classroom rather than each student, so Mullady said she only has about seven faces looking at her on Google Meet instead of all 25. Mullady said, “When I finally get to teach in-person, teaching in front of that many faces will be an adjustment for sure.