Student Teaching

I'm two weeks into student teaching. I'm absolutely loving it. I teach two periods of junior high health alone and team teach another with another student teaching. At times I feel like I don't want to collaborate at all and I'd much rather just do the whole thing myself. But then I realize how blessed I am to have so much prep time and I think about what a different experience this is from other student teachers'.
First of all, my mentor teacher is great. She's been teaching for 12 years and never had a student teacher. For 11 years she taught science and has only taught health for 1 year, so she's just beginning to be a health teacher and is still open to new ideas. Lots of student teachers are stuck with mentor teachers who are totally stuck on doing things the same way they've been doing them for the past 25 years. My mentor teacher is awesome. She lets us come up with our own unit outlines and is fine with everything as long as we follow the state standards. It's really a liberating experience as opposed to what I've heard some of my friends going through. And even though we are her first student teachers, she's been a mentor teacher for quite some time, now, and is always willing to give advice and observe and help us become better teachers.
Second of all, It's SO NICE having so much time to prepare lessons, grade papers, evaluate how certain lessons went, and make the appropriate changes so I can do better next time (when I'm on my own). What this really feels like is a 'test run' sort of semester, where I have an idea of what I want to do as a teacher and I get to test it out in the classroom every day to see if it works. I feel like this should all be part of some grand thesis or disertation and that I should be collecting data and running regressions and getting a grad degree. To tell the truth, it's actually part of the only assignment that I have to turn in for the course, called the Teacher Work Sample. Basically I have to prove that I can do what I'm doing by putting it all on paper. I just happen to be in a position where I have the time and resources to put a lot of time into improving what I've done while bringing minimal work home. Quite the blessing, really.
Third, I'm not nearly as tired as I would be if I was standing up teaching 6 lessons a day. Wow, what a piece of work I'd be coming home from that. Instead, I'm teaching just half of that at the most, and I still have energy when I come home. That's really nice.
Lastly, my fellow student teacher has had different experiences and has different ideas than I do about how to teach. At some times, I feel like this is exactly why I don't want to team teach, but in all reality I should be greatful for the different ideas that she brings to the table. I'm only one man, and I'm willing to see good ideas of how I can help kids learn the material.
Other than those things, I really can't think of another reason I wouldn't want to do it myself. But if for nothing else, those four reasons are enough to make me grateful for the experience of team teaching. Overall I can't complain. I really enjoy all the free time, especially since I'll be needing it to study for my next two Praxis exams--Biology and Social Studies.