Each year, new student teachers step into classrooms across campus to gain hands-on experience with students and learn valuable skills — a critical step in their journey to becoming fully-fledged educators.
Aside from meeting state education requirements of a bachelor’s degree and passing certification tests, aspiring teachers in California are required to complete a certain number of hours of student teaching depending on their college to apply for certification. For those like student-teacher Austin Lim seeking a Single Subject Teaching Credential, this can look like joining a high school classroom for a year to work under the guidance of experienced educators. Working in music teacher Crystal Isola’s choir classes for the first semester, Lim hopes to help inspire and guide students with his passion for music and choir.
“So far it has been a very interesting and fun experience,” Lim said. “It’s a challenge but it also reminds me that students — and me as a teacher and a person — are still trying to learn and grow.”
Lim was originally inspired to teach by the joy and purpose he found in helping students become more confident with themselves through music. After graduating from San Jose State University with a degree in music education, Lim entered student teaching with the goal of working in choir and with high schoolers. Isola responded through SJSU, agreeing to take on Lim and help him fulfill his second-semester requirement of one year of student teaching.
“Music student teachers don’t operate the same as other student teachers — Mr. Lim has been involved in teaching the class right from the get-go,” Isola said. “I’m mostly working with him on classroom management, the pace of the lessons and keeping goals and objectives in mind throughout.”
While student teachers’ roles usually evolve through the year as they gradually take on more responsibilities, Lim has been engaged since his start with classroom activities ranging from leading warm-ups to rehearsing songs. With Lim already having accumulated experience in teaching, Isola mostly provided small tips and tricks as his mentor and was able to divide tasks from her choir classes evenly between them.
“Music teaching is a very physically as well as mentally challenging job, so the fact that I don’t have to put out that energy all day long has been nice because he takes over half of that for me,” Isola said.
Having already completed a year of student teaching at another school with an academic culture and environment different from Lynbrook, Lim has also sought to potentially provide a fresh perspective to students on how to handle academic priorities and pressures. Through his teaching, he aims to not only help students organize priorities in a way that allows them to live more in the moment and express themselves more genuinely, but also to encourage students to try new things — without being given explicit instructions and fearing failure — in a way that mirrors situations they may face in the real world.
“I hope to teach children the joys of music but also to teach them that music as a medium, especially singing, is an ultimate expression of being comfortable and accepting who you are,” Lim said. “There are a lot of things in life that we can’t control and nothing is perfect but there is still joy to be found and appreciating that joy is important.”
