My PETE Student Teaching Experience: Kamora Johnson

Student Ambassadors
2 days ago
5 min read

Kamora Johnson

McKay Student Ambassador

Physical Education

Student teaching was an amazing experience. Going into the semester, I was terrified. I didn’t feel ready to teach on my own, and I wasn’t sure I could handle doing it every single day for so long. The first few weeks were challenging, but I was lucky to have an incredible mentor teacher who helped me work through the stress. Over time, something shifted. Teaching went from something I feared to something I loved and felt confident in.

I’m writing this blog to show you what my day to day looked like but to also hopefully inspire you to be confident in your teaching skills as well!

Placement

I was placed at Timpview High School in Provo School District, where I taught PE and Health. Most of my students were 10th graders (15–16 years old). During my time at BYU, I had practicum experience in elementary, middle, and high school settings, but high school was my favorite, so I was really excited about this placement.

I was also paired with another student teacher in my cohort, and we split our mentor teacher’s classes. My mentor teacher taught three periods of Health, two periods of Lifetime Activities (PE), and one period of Yoga. I was responsible for teaching two periods of Health and one period of PE.

A Day in the Life of a Student Teacher

My day started at 7:00 a.m., about 30 minutes before school began, so I could prepare for lessons.

On A days, I taught two periods of Health, each about 90 minutes long. Teaching the same lesson twice in a row felt a little strange at first, but I actually grew to love it. It gave me the chance to see what worked and what didn’t in the first class and adjust for the second class.

I loved teaching health because of the relationships I built with my students. Health is such an important class because we go over so many essential and important life skills and topics. This often lead to many vulnerable conversations. Through this, I got to know my students really well and learned how I can adapt my lessons to meet their needs.After my Health classes, we went to Yoga, then lunch, and finished the day with a prep period.

On B days, I taught PE. We rotated sports or activities every two weeks, which kept things fun and engaging for both me and the students. After PE, we had a prep period, another health class, lunch and then PE again.

January

We started on the second day of the semester, which I actually appreciated because students hadn’t fully settled into a routine yet. That gave me the opportunity to help build one alongside my mentor teacher.

At first, I observed and assisted with small tasks like taking attendance or teaching a short portion of the lesson. After about two weeks of gradually stepping in, I was teaching full classes on my own.

I also got to Chaperone a school dance and I had so much fun! The biggest mosh pit I've ever seen.

February

February was the hardest month of student teaching. I had taken on full teaching responsibility and was lesson planning every day. It was overwhelming, and I often felt like I wasn’t doing a good job.

On top of that, I was coaching swim with state approaching, waiting to hear back from grad school, and preparing for a big a speech I had to give later that month. It all felt like too much, and I started to question whether I could really do this.

One night, when I was breaking down, my husband said something simple but powerful, “Just go and focus on making one kid’s day better.” That small shift in perspective changed everything. I stopped focusing so much on how overwhelmed I felt and started focusing more on my students and their needs. The stress didn’t disappear, but having that purpose made it feel manageable and meaningful.

March

In March, I finally started to find my rhythm. I felt more confident in both my teaching and lesson planning, and I began to get more creative.

A few tools I loved using were:

Canva for presentations: It made creating engaging slides easy with visuals, graphics, and templates. I used it for both Health and PE lessons, especially for teaching rules, definitions, and showing videos. Plus, teachers can get a free premium account through their school.
Google Forms for data collection: This helped me understand what students already knew before a lesson and what they learned afterward. It also showed me what needed more clarification, which helped me improve future lessons.
A question box: Some topics in Health can be difficult to ask about out loud, so I created an anonymous question box. This gave students a safe way to ask more vulnerable questions and allowed me to address topics they were genuinely curious about.

In March, I also had the opportunity to present some of the mentored research I had done with my PE professors at a national PE conference in Kansas City. It was an amazing experience and I learned so much from other PE and health teachers from across the country.

April

Spring break! The first and last spring break I will ever have at BYU:)

April was a bittersweet month. I was excited to graduate and move on, but I was also so sad to leave my students, mentor teacher and fellow student teacher. I had grown so close to all of them.We also started my favorite units in both Health and PE, which made teaching even more enjoyable. I put a lot of effort into my final lessons and wanted to end on a meaningful note. I wrote each of my students a personal message (which took much longer than I expected but was completely worth it). I also created Yoga Bingo cards for my mentor teacher to use after I left.

Conclusion

After a semester of teaching, I can now say that I feel confident teaching and I learned to love it. There were many ups and downs, but I am so grateful for the experience.

I couldn’t have done it without God’s help. Every morning, I prayed that I would be guided by the spirit, and that brought me a lot of peace and direction throughout the day.

If you’re feeling nervous about student teaching, that’s completely normal, but you can do this. BYU prepares you well, and you’ll have so many resources and people ready to support you. My mentor teacher and professors played a huge role in helping me grow every step of the way. You won’t be perfect, and sometimes feedback is hard to hear, but that’s how growth happens. When you push yourself, you’ll accomplish more than you ever thought possible.

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