One TV to Another-Visit to Tri-Valley

On Feb. 19th I had the opportunity to visit a fellow cohort member and their classes. I visited Amanda Forstater and Gretchen Dingman at Tri-Valley High School to take a deeper look into their program. While talking with my cooperating teacher, Nicole Weaver, we thought it would be good to take a look at a program that is very different than Twin Valley. Twin Valley offers classes in Animal Science, Aquaculture, Ag Leadership, Ag Science, Natural Resources, and Horticulture, while Tri-Valley offers a variety of Ag Mechanic classes, Ag Science, and Vet Science. I was also able to talk with them about how a single teacher program operates compared to a dual teacher program. I noticed while observing Amanda, that her students were much different from mine, I never had any issues keeping students on task or having them participate. Her students on the other had were testy and were harder to engage. I watched her use multiple strategies as well as a cool interest approach for egg grading, to get her students excited and ready for the lesson! I also saw her implement a new seating charts as well. She was having some issues with students talking during class and a couple of other issues. It was interesting to see her students react to it. Ms. Dingman even had to talk to the classes about the issues. Because my visit was early in the semester, she only taught a portion of the classes and had not started her full class load, I was also able to observe Amanda's cooperating teacher. It was interesting to see the way the classes worked, and all of the were working on completing the projects.   I thought it was really interesting to see another program that was different from the others I have seen, I left Tri-Valley with new ideas that I could incorporate into my own classes!