Pre-student teaching is a requirement for all education majors, but for seven UW-Platteville industrial technology majors, the experience drastically altered their semester.

These seven students have been assigned to the classroom of Platteville High School’s industrial technology teacher and football coach, Chuck Smet. Smet broke his leg Sept. 17 while coaching a freshman football game and has not returned to teach his classes since. A long-term substitute was hired to teach Smet’s classes during his absence, but she did not have the technology education background because she was a retired high school physical education teacher.

The students were already pre-student teaching for Smet’s class, and when Smet was unable to teach his class, UW-P industrial studies professor Frank Steck informed the students they would be teaching the classes for the time being, Smet said. At UW-P, a technology education major who is pre-student teaching is required to be in both middle and high school classrooms for 40 hours each.

Nick Airriess, senior technology education major, said that he and the other pre-student teachers were notified the day after Smet broke his leg that they would be teaching his classes until he returns.

When informed that he would be teaching class every day, Justin Hollenberger, senior technology education major, said he laughed and felt a little anxiety, but he did not dwell on it.

The curriculum for the semester was already set and there were lesson plans in place for the first few weeks after Smet’s injury, so the student teachers stayed with the curriculum but made their own lesson plans for the remainder of the semester, George Katze, senior technology education major said.

“At the beginning of the semester I thought, ‘pre-student teaching just got a little more interesting,’” Katze said. “You can’t learn to teach just by reading a book.”

The pre-student teachers assumed all responsibilities in the classroom: constructing lesson plans, grading tests, making mid-term evaluations and holding parent teacher conferences. The pre-student teachers agreed they would have anywhere from one to three hours of preparation for every fifty minutes of class.

“It is amazing to see everything put into practice. It is so important to have a good  [grading] rubric. Sometimes I want to thank David Chellevold for stressing how important rubrics are,” Airriess said.

“The biggest challenge was remembering what your life was like in middle school,” Katze said. It is important to relate to your students and try to understand what they are going through, Katze said.

When UW-P’s semester concludes most of the pre-student teachers will be done with their experiences at the high school. Airriess will continue teaching his class, and David Swenson, a UW-P alumnus, will be teaching classes until Smet makes a full recovery.

Hollenberger said, “[The best thing about the experience has been] knowing I can get pitted in a corner and wiggle my way out, and almost do it gracefully.”

“[The students] have really kept the curriculum going,” Smet said. “Technology students at [UW-P] were very well prepared to teach.”