Dual Enrollment. One of the things Florida does right for its public education system.

Students who maintain a 3.0 or higher GPA and can pass a college entrance exam, known as the PERT, are able to participate.

Essentially, students attend their local community or state college for free throughout high school. I was blessed enough to be one of the students who could participate in this. I completed my Associate in Arts degree a month before finishing high school and I did not have to pay a dime. I started at the University of South Florida this fall as a first-year; however, I am taking junior and senior level classes since I already completed over 60 credits. I am on track to graduate with my bachelor's degree in 2020, just two years after graduating high school. How cool! Only in my major, it can make things a little awkward.

I have wanted to be a teacher my entire life.

I have loved school and have appreciated all of the extra work my past teachers have done to ensure my success. I am not nervous at all about becoming a teacher—I have worked on backstage side of things since I was 8 years old. But what I am nervous about is student teaching. Despite tutoring, teaching small groups, making lesson plans, grading papers—I am scared to student teach. Why?

I am currently nineteen years old and working in a senior high school class.

I am expected to teach students who are seventeen and eighteen years old. Back home, I still have friends who are as young as sophomores in high school! While I am not teaching a student I know, the fact that I could potentially have taught at a school where my friends still attend just weirds me out. My students assume my age is over twenty since I am only three semesters away from graduation at USF. Even then, I look young for my age and I fear it will be difficult to get the respect and focus from students that I need in order to be successful.

On the bright side, I was just in high school and should understand their mindset better than an older teacher, right?

Or I should at least be familiar with the curriculum, right? WRONG! I took the credit for junior and senior year English courses at my state college. The high school and college curriculum for the same credit is actually quite different. My students are reading and responding to Shakespeare plays I have never even read! I have to read a new section of the SparkNotes version just so I can have some idea of what is going on in the classroom for the day. This tends to cause some insecurity for me. I struggle to understand and be comfortable with the curriculum (that I have never been exposed to) while also struggling with the fact that I was just in high school nine months ago.

Each week definitely teaches me something new.

Whether it is about myself, the students, the curriculum, or other teachers, I am learning. This is what student teaching is all about! I know I will be facing a similar challenge when I graduate college at twenty and my best friend is a senior in high school, but that is a worry for the future. For now, I am going to keep finding ways to learn in my student-teaching environment so I can be the best teacher I can possibly be!