It's In My Nature

I can't believe that we are already a third of the way through the semester of student teaching! Time is definitely flying and it's going so great. Every week is something new and different. There are so many great learning experiences that continue to come up! It can sometimes be a lot trying to capture all of these different experiences and processing them. One of the best things I have done is keep a daily brain dump reflection to remind me of all of these different things farther down the road. Yes, this was required by Penn State but there is so much value to it. This week, Dr. Foster came to visit and that was so beneficial. It might be nerve wrenching to prepare to be observed but the observation can really prove to be beneficial. I learn little things here and there that I don't realize I am doing and realize things that I don't do. One of these is my lack of doing effective bellwork/opening activity. Some of my students decided that they didn't like the w...

This week turned out to be a really good week! We had a lot of fun and exciting lessons and labs throughout the entire week! We ended the week with a cool soil test lab where students brought in their own soil samples from home and did our own soil tests! I showed them a real example of a soil test from Penn State and then they had to do their own on the same sheet. The results were turning out pretty cool until we ran out of time! We will pick the lab back up on Monday and finish the tests. I can't wait to see what the rest of the results show and what kind of discoveries the students make on their own soil samples! This week in Ag 1, I started the public speaking unit. As you can imagine, most of the students are not very fond of the unit and have voiced their displeasures. I am trying hard to make it as fun and exciting as possible, but also getting them out of their comfort zones. Each student will have to memorize the  FFA Creed  and then say it in front of the en...

This week I was able to go with Ms. Metrick and complete a few SAE Visits. We visited two entrepreneurial SAE Projects. The first student is conducting a dairy beef cattle project. She has had the calf for a month. This project is housed on the family farm where she also raises other species for fair. Everything looked great! All of the animals were healthy and the barn was super clean. The student was very knowledgable on their project and does a fantastic job of keeping accurate records. The second SAE project was very similar. The student has a Beef Cattle project and completes the project on the family farm. The student artificially inseminated their cows and then purchased the calf from his parents. This student does an excellent job of recording all of the costs that go into his project. The only thing that he could do to improve would be to do a better job of keeping up with weekly and daily journal entries. This was all really cool to see how SAE visits are done....

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...

This week flew by! Granted it was only a four-day week, but I can't believe it is already over! For it only being a short week, we accomplished a lot of great things! One of the most interesting things that happened this week was on Tuesday, we had IEP meetings all morning. This was really cool to see IEP meetings from a different perspective and to see the school working hard to make the student be as successful as possible. There can be a lot of hoops to jump through sometimes to create a healthy and active learning environment for a number of different IEP's in the same class. But going to the learning support teacher and working with them makes that possible.  On Thursday, the FFA State Officers came to visit CASH! They lead leadership and team-building workshops all day. Each class has a different group of kids with different personalities. It was cool to see some students come out of their shells and participate in the activities. Overall, the students learned a lot and...

I had the opportunity to sit in Mr. Bocain's Advanced Biology course this past Friday. I was expecting a typical biology classroom and a lecture. I soon realized how wrong I was to assume that. I was beyond impressed by how well that classroom worked throughout the period. The biggest surprise was that students wanted to be in that classroom!  The students are broken up into groups and they are given two mice at the beginning of the year. The students must monitor the genetic traits and knowledge of the mice through each generation. They change their diet and evaluate the mice through a series of tests. Students take daily measurements and weights to look at the change. This assignment may seem really cool but if you ask me, the coolest part of this assignment was seeing how much the students enjoy it.  As soon as the bell rang and the students began to arrive in class, they immediately went to work. Mr. Bocain did not have to give any instructions, the students k...

It's hard to believe that week 1 of my student teaching internship is already complete! The week flew by! It was an enjoyable week just simply learning the system and planning out the entire 15 weeks. Most of all, I had so much fun. I had the chance to learn from some of my students. To hear their passions and see learning! The highlight of the week was watching kids have fun making butter. Something so simple and yet the students had such a great time and learned a lot. If there is one thing that this week has made me realize, is to remain calm and teach on. I have been worrying and stressing about student teaching for months. Now I look back and all I can do is laugh! There was nothing to worry or stress about. Having that growth mindset and being willing to learn through this process makes a world of a difference. Now that I have my bearings, I can't wait to start teaching classes. Week 1 is designed to be an observation week, to learn your role as a student teach...