Week 3: Time to Get Real

This week was a pretty rough one for me. I have been struggling a little bit to keep up with my classes and work ahead. During my first observation on Wednesday, I was only "getting through" my lessons. I wasn't making them my own or making them super engaging. After a long talk with my University Supervisor and Cooperating Teacher, I fully realized that I need to step up my game. I have been extremely lucky with my students and they have been rolling with the punches and I have had zero discipline problems with them. So for the rest of the week I focused on making better lessons for the upcoming days. I realized that no matter what my future has in store for me, I need to do what is best for my students right now. They deserve the best teacher they could have, and I intend to deliver! Next week my students are excited to participate in debates and mock conferences, and I am excited to revamp our next units!

Week Two- Trial by Fire

Week two student teaching is in the books! Time is flying! This week, we didn't have school on Monday, Tuesday was the end of the previous semester, and had an early dismissal on Wednesday, so I did not even get to meet all of the kids until Thursday! Wednesday was the first day I got to meet the majority of my kids, and they all seemed pretty good! They were extremely attentive and we got through our objectives right on time! Thursday was a little different. My cooperating teacher had to call in due to a family situation, so I had the opportunity to teach all by myself on DAY 2! I was extremely nervous, but the kids worked with me and by the end of the first class I realized I could do it! I did have some students disobey my orders, but a quick correction and students were back on task! The hardest for me to teach was Horticulture. I have a weak background in the topic and Mrs. Weaver and I planned on Co-teaching the material. I did my best and the students didn't seem to notice that I was panicking on the inside! One thing that a few teachers have told me is sometimes, you have to act like you know what your doing and appear confident, the students won't ever know the difference! So I did my best and no one seemed to notice but me! Overall, I think teaching by myself was exactly what I needed, I have had mixed feelings about the experience from the start, but now that I was put through "Trial by Fire", I feel much more confident in my ability to do better for my students!

Student Teaching: Week One

Let me just start y saying, "WHEW!" To be quite honest, at first I didn't know what to think about the whole experience. I was just kind of going along and helping Mrs. Weaver where I could while thinking about how I am going to do this all myself in a few weeks! I start fresh next week with a new semester, new students, and new classes! This week I assisted students while the compiled information for their wildlife species project, and helped administer their final exams. I did run into an issue with a student using his cell phone. I confiscated the phone immediately, but part of me still thinks I should have handled the situation differently. I realized in this experience that I don't know how to handle every situation! This just so happened when my cooperating teacher was NOT in the room with me to help decide how to handle it and I had to think on my feet and act quickly, I guess that sometimes you have to do just that!

I did have a good time setting up my desk this week! Its nice to have a space of my own to work! I am not used to that idea, and it really brings the whole student teaching experience to life! I am starting to get a little nervous to begin taking over classes next week! I am starting by taking over two classes, Agricultural Science, and Natural Resource Management, while co-teaching Horticulture with Mrs. Weaver. I also was able to start grading some assignments this week. I thought I was going to hate it, but I actually don't mind it at all! Its nice to flip through papers, when I actually have to read them and look through their answers, I feel quite productive!

Oh and did I mention the fun that Mrs. Weaver and I had while trying to clean out our office during our Prep Period!? Here is a short video to show just how we operate:

Mid-Winter Convention / PA Farm Show

First day of student teaching involved taking 32 students to my very first mid-winter convention! I was pretty nervous being responsible for 32 students when I knew 3 of their names and only recognized 2 of them! Thankfully I attended with veteran teachers who knew these kids! I was a little shocked with how everything worked out. One of the coolest experiences was being out on the floor looking around the arena as it was filling up. After the students were situated, I joined the rest of the students in the bleachers (of course they wanted to sit as high above the crowd as they could, but it made for an awesome view!) I think the most inspiring part of the ceremony was watching all of those students put on their very first FFA jacket. To be honest, I would be lying if I also wasn't a little jealous, knowing that I will never have that experience saddens me a little, but watching all of those students take advantage of an opportunity that I never had lifts my spirits right back up again!