Hi Sarah: I'll respond to your posts with new posts of my own, as that makes it easier to see all of the posts.

What a great post! It was so interesting to hear your thoughts about your instructors here, and how we teach. You're right, you are learning many things here: the curriculum content, how to teach the curriculum, teaching concerns (assessment, classroom management, etc), and how you are being taught.  It's good that you are seeing some teaching approaches which you could use yourself in your practicum. You will also probably see some approaches which you don't think are so effective, or disconnects between how we (instructors) suggest you teach and how we actually do teach. You'll have to filter out the effective/good from the not so good. You also mentioned humour-- having a sense of humour as an educator is crucial-- teaching can be crazy, and you should be able to laugh at yourself (don't put yourself down in front of your students, but don't take yourself too seriously-- it's a fine line sometimes). Humour goes a long way in teaching.

And I really liked what you said about greatness in yourself and your students. If we are to engage successfully with people, we should be happy with ourselves. And you're absolutely right-- how can we demand greatness of our students if we don't demand greatness of ourselves as teachers? Students will see the contradictions if we don't. And it's important that we demand greatness of our students. There's a lot of evidence showing that teachers who have high expectations for their students are more successful teachers-- their students achieve more. And these kinds of teachers also tend to have high expectations of themselves and their colleagues.

Finally, I also really like your four "strands" of supporting students-- that will take you a long way as a caring educator.

Thanks for such an interesting post, and I look forward to our next conversation!

Terry