(Picture Source: Wikipedia)"Woah, we're halfway there...!" were the lyrics from Bon Jovi's "Livin' On A Prayer" that stuck out to me this week. Mainly because Wednesday marked the exact halfway point of my student teaching experience. It has been a truly amazing experience that's taught me so many things. We will see where this last half takes me!
Monday-normal
Tuesday-normal
Wednesday-activity period but normal
Thursday-normal
Friday-2 hour delay
An almost normal week. Until we got to Friday. All was good (for the most part) until Thursday night into Friday morning. Then we had snow. Yay! Depending on who you talk to, it might be yay. To me, not really but hey it ended up fine.
Things I Learned
- to just roll with it! Without Mr. Haussener, it could have been a disaster. But I think it went perfectly fine. No injuries, no problems with the logistics of the program. We focused on getting the daily essentials done (which is taking care of the rabbits and chickens, watering the hanging baskets in the greenhouse, etc.) With that, I almost got a full week of teaching in for once!!
- students will take advantage of you without their "real" teacher there. Super talkative and disrespectful. How do I take care of it (besides talking to them about it at the time)? Give them a pop quiz the next day; what do they do? Complain about it but complete it anyway. So far, the quizzes look good so I don't know what they were complaining about.
BECOV Progress
- I definitely continued improving on variability
- I need to continue improving on clarity and enforcement of directions
- I believe my enthusiasm drifted to the wayside this week because I was trying to get through remembering all of the things we needed to do to make the program run well
Advice Wanted
- How do I incorporate hands on activities into subject areas that I don't know much about? (forestry for example)
- Also, looking forward to some other units I'm teaching (like biotechnology and animal science genetics for example)...what is the "beginning" of those units? I need to start at the very basics but where exactly is that?
First and foremost, thank you for keeping things together while I was gone (and while Darren was out the second half of the week). While this is certainly not what I had in mind or ideal for your student teaching experience, it has been a blessing having you there this past week.
ReplyDeleteI think you probably got a small taste of everything else that an ag teacher needs to do than just coming up with lessons for class. This is good, but hopefully I can take some of that added stress back from you this week.
As originally stated to you at the beginning of this whole experience, continue to work on building your rapport and positive relationships with the students. Ask students how their weekend was, how sports are going, talk about to them about their job after school, etc. I understand that this is difficult for you since you are only coming in for a short while, but be sure to keep this in mind at your first job. It is a tiring investment, but the reward will prevent a lot of classroom management and discipline issues. Furthermore, be sure to keep your tone in mind when you are handling these situations; it’s not just what you are the telling the kids, but rather how you tell them. This can make or break effective discipline.
Personally, I never use quizzes as a “punishment.” I’m not sure on the specifics of how you carried out your lessons this week, but remember that the more engaged the students are, the fewer classroom management and discipline issues you will probably have (prior proper planning prevents poor performance).
While I wasn’t able to see you teach at all this week, your variability has come a long ways in just the past few short weeks. Keep things fun and hands-on. If you’re not excited about it, how do you expect them to be? We are in the entertainment business; if our classes are not entertaining, students will stop taking them and we will be out of a job. Keep it up: look through those books I gave you, talk to other teachers for ideas, talk with Mr. Bensing about a specific lesson this week, talk to a fellow student teacher on something that worked well for them, look at NAAE CoP, etc. Use your plethora of resources for engaging, varied lessons.
Forestry: go outside and do it!! Don’t just talk about tree ID using a dichotomous key, actually go outside and do it. Don’t just talk about or watch a video on measuring board feet of a tree; actually go outside. Don’t just talk about chainsaw safety, actually bring one in and show them safe and unsafe practices or maintenance.
Hands on forestry? Do you have trees near school that you can walk out to? Put their observation skills to work. Bring them out and have them choose a tree and describe it. There's two ways to go from here. Based on their descriptions, have a classmate find the tree they described or after they do an initial description, introduce them to terms related to trees and have them improve their description. Create mystery forestry product bags (paper lunch bags that have items such as pencils, Popsicle sticks, toothpicks, a notecard, and an almond, a walnut, etc. ) where they guess the item based on feel. Or get outside and do some tree size math such as this . . . https://www.mcgill.ca/redpath/files/redpath/Trees.And.Math.pdf
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