Wike

Cassie Wike, senior secondary education major, has wanted to be a teacher for as long as she can remember.

“My mom loves to tell the story of how I used to teach my teddy bears,” Wike said. “I would even assign them homework.”

Wike, originally from Highland Ranch, Colo., is completing her secondary education degree and student teaching in the social sciences this semester at Emporia High School. She is slated to graduate this May.

“I was excited to go back to high school,” she said of her student teaching experience. “I loved high school.” 

During one teddy school session, Wike’s mother found a teddy bear out in hallway, upon asking her daughter why, Wike responded that the teddy bear was misbehaving.

While Wike’s students are no longer teddy bears, they can still be ornery.

“Certain students try to test the boundaries,” she said.

Wike has had to handle challenging behavior from high school students as a student teacher and that as a 21-year-old, there is not as much distance (in years) between her and her students as with some other teachers. But even at 21, Wike admits that it is “hard to remember what it’s like to be a high schooler.”

She said that motivating students is one of the more difficult aspects of her job.

Wike said that she picked up a lot of useful tools in her education classes that are helpful for student teaching and beyond.

“I use Kagan activities a lot,” Wike said.

Kagan activities are collaborative learning tools developed by Dr. Spencer Kagan.

Wike said she is also grateful that she learned from her instructors – Darla Mallein, associate professor of social sciences, in particular – that lectures are not the only way to get crucial information across in a social studies classroom.

“(She is) very passionate about teaching,” said Mallien. “She really wants to be the best teacher she can and she wants to reach that goal. She is willing to do whatever it takes to be creative.”

Her tip for student teachers?

“I think if you don’t plan ahead, it is a really daunting task to grade, learn the content and create a lesson,” Wike said.

According to Wike, it takes her under an hour to make a lesson plan, plus additional time to make handouts.

“But I enjoy making the handouts,” she quickly added.

Wike started the semester with three weeks worth of lessons. This has left her with enough time to hold an on-campus job, and work on wedding plans with her fiancé, Russell Medley, who is also a student at Emporia State studying to become a teacher.

Medley describes his fiancée as “very  self-motivated and creative, she likes to design lessons that go beyond lecturing.”

Wike says that the hardest thing about student teaching is going back to school full-time after having gotten used to setting her own schedule as a college student.

However, Wike said she is enjoying her return trip to high school because student teaching is “better than being a college student.”

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