AU student Payton Block 'doing a wonderful job' student-teaching in Shelby

Payton Block always loved learning in school and had some really influential teachers who inspired her to be the best student she could be.

“With that, my high school French teacher was the first to suggest teaching after I developed a lesson plan for one of her assignments, and I had a lot of fun with it,” said Block, a senior education major at Ashland University

But COVID-19 had her questioning that career choice.

After seeing firsthand how well some teachers responded to the change in demands with the pandemic and tackled the obstacles it brought head-on, Block said she’s glad she decided to stick with it.

And so is Shelby Local Schools, which has been happy with her student-teaching in a seventh-grade English language arts classroom the first part of the semester and in the seventh-grade social studies classroom for the second half as her degree covers middle grades (4-9) with concentrations in English language arts and social studies.

“She is doing a wonderful job,” said Amy Bogner, who shared her classroom with Block the first part of the semester. “She is very driven in developing lesson plans, engaging with the students and excited to learn along the way.”

Bogner has been posting on the school district’s social media site about Block’s student-teaching journey. One post said Block did an incredible job of engaging the students in “The Boys in the Striped Pajamas” activity of “turning and talking” to each other about the book.

With COVID-19 in mind, Block came up with this activity.

“Ever since the pandemic, I have noticed that college students and middle-schools alike have more social anxiety than ever before,” Block said. “That makes presentations and talking to others much more difficult, so this quick activity gets students out of their seats for a minute and talking to their peers engaging with the novel.”

As an AU graduate, Bogner enjoys opening up her classroom to student-teachers from the university because Ashland does a good job of preparing future teachers and it also benefits her.

“I have been teaching for 24 years and truly enjoy the concepts that our future teachers bring to my classroom,” Bogner said. “I have already told Payton that she needs to show me how to use her digital slides for our daily warm-up.”

Block has done a great job of incorporating technology into her lessons, which is good since that is the future within teachers’ classrooms, Bogner said.

“Payton is going to be a wonderful teacher,” Bogner said. “She has a good rapport with the students, embraces our conversations when it comes to instruction and classroom management and develops great lessons. I have no doubt that she is going to make a wonderful asset to any district in the future.”