Elizabeth Terhorst
Emerging Expertise: Student Teaching at the High School Level
From August 11th to December 5th of 2025, I spent my time student teaching for honors credit in northwestern Indiana for 10th grade English covering sections 10A and 10B.
It was a public high school that services a majority Black and Hispanic student body with a majority white staff. As per their mission statement, they are dedicated to equity, literacy, creativity, and critical thinking while providing high quality education founded on rapport, experiences, and opportunities to empower students and prepare them for their future an everchanging world. During my time there, I proved myself as an educator focusing in English, specifically through how I taught narratives and supported my students through all stages of the process.
Student Teaching Portfolio: Narratives
Narrative Unit in 10 A
Over the span of six weeks, we covered narratives in literature with my English 10 A class. In preparation for their essay, I used the week we had before the essay to see what they know about writing a narrative, used a mentor text to guide them with their essays, included hands-on experiential learning opportunities, and worked with them in class with specific and targeted feedback to help them craft their narrative essays and the final grade in the six-week grading period.
Artifact 1.
We covered a short story and used music to dive deeper into the characters in preparation for our essays. This also gave me a good read over what they did and didn't understand about crafting a narrative.
Go to the page to see student examples, material creation, and more.
Artifact 2.
Together, we worked on figuring out what goes into creating and narrative and practicing that on a smaller scale before we got to the summative assessment.
Go to the page to see student examples, material creation, and more.
Artifact 3.
Using two different types of pre-writing, we worked up to the students using examples and organizers to create their narrative essays at the culmination of our unit.
Go to the page to see student examples, material creation, and more.