FCS teacher Meryl Hopper-Henningson recently gained the help of the new student teacher, Rachel Ferry. Ferry is here for the rest of the semester and is helping in all of the foods and child development classes.

Ferry is from Harlan, Iowa, and graduated from Harlan High School. This December she will be graduating from Iowa State University to work in teaching FCS. When you student teach, you are assigned a school within an hour radius of where you live. Ferry was originally put in Avoca but was then put into Atlantic. Ferry said that she prefers a 3A school rather than a smaller school like Avoca.

In the classroom Ferry has as many responsibilities as Hopper does. She assigns homework and has to check it, and put them all in the grade book. She also helps within the classroom, working with students or helping Hopper with anything she needs. Ferry may have a lot of the same responsibilities, but the classes she works with change by the week. The first week is just helping the teacher with organization and observing how the teacher teaches. The next week she will add a class and then another class the next week until she is working in all of the classes for a period of about 2-4 weeks. This is considered full time, and when she has completed those weeks she phases out again dropping one class per week until she is back where she started.

Ferry still attends Iowa State University and has to write papers every week to reflect on the week, set any goals, and or think of improvements for the next week. “To be a teacher in Iowa, you have to student teach.” said Ferry. To get to this point of student teaching Ferry had to take one test and pass, you can take these tests as many times as you want, before being assigned a school. Then after student teaching she will have to take two more tests where if you fail this test you can no longer become a teacher at Iowa State or get your teaching license. You cannot change the type of teaching or anything, you can transfer to a different college but Iowa State has to notify the college that you failed their teaching program. These new sets of rules have only been put in the past 10-15 years. Teachers like Hopper did not have to take three different tests.

Ferry said that student teaching has shown her what it takes to become a teacher. Time management, communication is key, patience, and developing teaching strategies just to name a few. “We are doing a more 1 on 1 thing. I’m always trying to become better, and to catch up with Mrs. Hopper in the future,” said Ferry. Overall she says she is enjoying her time student teaching in Atlantic. Ferry wanted a 3A school and said that Atlantic High school is very nice with great staff and friendly students. “I love this school, so it’s fun.”