Briana Gardner — Staff Writer 

Every weekday morning at 7:30 a.m. Dordt University student Aja Bell arrives at the Sioux Center Middle School for a full day of planning, teaching, and observing…sprinkled with a little bit of dancing.  

Bell is a senior education major. After graduation, she wants to teach middle school math and science. But before she recieves her diploma, as with all education majors, Bell must complete a semester of student teaching. Student teaching is an internship-like role, where a education student observes their mentor teacher and helps design and teach lessons. Bell works in a fifth-grade math classroom at the intermediate school. 

Student teaching is merely the most recent step in Bell’s teaching journey. Since the second grade, Bell wanted to become a teacher after her teacher, Mrs. Gornick, who modeled the passion for teaching that Bell seeks to have in her classroom.  

“She meant a lot to me,” Bell said. “She rooted for us and who we were within the classroom.” 

During her senior year of high school, Bell got her first opportunity to follow in Gornick’s footsteps. Her school offered an education class that allowed Bell to spend the last hour of her day with fourth graders. She became an education major at Dordt.  

Education majors are typically exposed to classroom environments during their first semester, but Bell started college during the COVID pandemic in 2020, so university students were prohibited from entering elementary and secondary schools. 

When college students were finally allowed back into the elementary and secondary classrooms, Bell helped out with Kidzone, a program many Dordt education majors are involved with. As part of the program, college students create Bible-based lesson plans for kindergarten through third graders. 

Through Kidzone, Bell got her first real taste of what being a teacher could look like. Her favorite way to motivate students was with food, and she would use trail mix to help them memorize Bible verses by assigning different pieces of trail mix to different verses. Bell now teaches some of those same students in her classroom.  

As a result of experiences like Kidzone, Bell felt well prepared to student teach. However, it was a jarring transition nonetheless. 

“You don’t realize how much you learned until you step into the classroom,” Bell said. “Only when you step into the classroom do you realize, ‘Oh yes, we talked about how to handle this in class!’” 

Her favorite mantra from the Education Department is the line, “You are who you teach.” This advice has helped her embrace a unique teaching style that allows her to be both professional and energetic with her students.  

“I am Aja as a teacher,” Bell said. “I love that I get to share that with my students.” 

Bell is still building her teaching style. She adopts parts of her mentor teacher’s style and incorporates pieces into her lesson plans and activities. Walking past her classroom, Bell and her students might be caught in a lively round of Just Dance to shake off jitters, or in the middle a song about dividing decimals that reminds them to “move it, move it.” 

Bell teaches four morning math classes, and hangs out with her students for lunch and recess. She often joins the students in a quick game of knockout–which which she usually looses.To stimulate conversaion during lunch, Bell asks a question of the day to keep her students engaged. 

“Some of the questions get pretty heated,” said Bell. “Takis or Hot Cheetos… that was a big debate.” 

After lunch, Bell teaches more math classes, and and supervises students with anything from fractions to reading comprehension. 

At 4 p.m. her school day ends, and she drives back to Dordt. She spends a couple of minutes in her car, to decompress before heading to her Southview apartment.  

“It’s shocking how different it is,” said Bell. “I can’t just come back to campus and be Aja.”  

Student teaching has given Bell’s semester a different rhythm than any other, but it is worth it when Bell gets to dance alongside her students or help a struggling student master a math problem. 

“It’s so exciting when I realize, “Oh my goodness, I did that!” said Bell. “I helped them learn something!”