Week 3 - Just Keep Planning

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I can't believe how quickly this week went by. I am beginning to see this common trend of how fast student teaching really goes. This week, I attended the Crawford County 4-H & FFA Sale Committee Meeting. Even though the meeting was long and a little boring since I cannot relate to anything that was being talked about. It was still cool to see and realize just how much goes into planning the county fair and scheduling for the livestock sale. This is a process that takes all year to plan and takes a number of different people to make it all work.

On Thursday, we had an FFA meeting, my first at CASH. We planned out national FFA Week! It was cool to see the role of an advisor at these meetings. Ms. Metrick does an awesome job of really letting the kids lead and run the FFA chapter. The role of an FFA advisor is not to lead the program but to provide the foundation for the students to build and maintain the program.


On Monday, I helped Ms. Metrick grade a poster project from her Dairy Unit. Some of the posters that these kids turned in were incredible. They had to pick a dairy product, research it, and present that product on a poster. These two were my favorite ones! 


This activity reminded me of how important it is to have a project-based class and not to have just lectures and exams. You can asses students' learning through projects and even let students teach each other through projects. I have the Ag 3/4 class is doing just that! They are finishing up their soil nutrient projects and on Monday will present to the class. During their presentation, they have to be the "experts" on their cycle and educate the rest of the class on all the different parts and functions. I am really looking forward to seeing the students' creativity and learning. 



Next week gets exciting because I will be teaching 5 of the 7 Ag classes! We will be starting a public speaking unit with Ag 1, continuing the woodshop unit with Ag 2, finishing the soils unit with Ag 3/4, and starting the small gas engines unit with Ag Mechanics. There is a lot of planning and organizing that goes into this and there is a lot of fun things planned! My only concern is small gas engines. I have the lessons planned out but I am concerned about my lack of content knowledge. How do you stay confident as a teacher when you are not very knowledgable in a specific content area? 

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