It's In My Nature

As I have been reading different articles from all over, a lot of schools are doing enrichment activities. But these activities seem like they can be and sometimes are busywork. We can't teach new content, lessons can only be 20 minutes long, assignments can't be graded, and they have to be relatable to what the students have already learned. This can be hard to still make learning fun under those guidelines. I created some really cool lessons for the first week of Conneaut Area's enrichment lessons. The only thing is, I hope the students actually participate since they are not graded.  Ag 1: We are in the middle of our wildlife unit and the students just learned about ecological principles in ecosystems. To show some of the different ecosystems and environments that the students have never seen before, we are going to explore Googles, The Hidden Worlds of the National Parks . These are virtual interactive tours of 5 different National Parks with all kinds of cool thing...

There has never been an event similar to this in our lives. Never would I have thought that a virus could really shut down the nation and almost the entire world. As all Americans are stuck at home, self-distancing themselves, I want everyone to know something. Just because we are in quarantine, doesn't mean learning stops! Students and families can set goals each and every single day to learn something new! Be sure to share it with not only your loved ones but share it with your social media. If you're an indoor person, then, stay inside and just google something you're interested in. We have the power of knowledge, history, content, and the world at the touch of our fingertips. So use it! If you are an outdoors person, go outside and explore everything nature has to offer. Spring is quickly approaching and the woods are alive. The PA Department of Health posted this picture on their Facebook this week. It's okay to go outside and explore! I have been going out...

Wow! This is definitely a unique situation and was not at all planned. If you would have told me in January that all schools in the state would close for a 2-week period, I would have laughed at you. I still can't believe what is happening and to quickly reflect on this, I am kind of frustrated. If you ask me, it would have made a lot more sense for the schools to have stayed open until Monday for kids to grab any materials from school and for the teachers to give out work to do. But unfortunately, that did not happen. I could have come up with projects for every class to do while they are on this break but that did not happen. Now, my students are not responsible for anything over the next two weeks. This is definitely frustrating looking at the long term plan and goal of student teaching and lesson planning. Trying to look ahead and start planning is so hard because we don't know when we will be allowed back. The goal is March 30th and I sure hope that can happen. With stud...

Another great week in the books! We accomplished a lot of cool things this week! Now that I have a full load of courses, I am starting to see how many moving parts there really are. It can quickly be overwhelming. I feel like all that I am ever doing is planning. Planning for tomorrow, the rest of the week and even next week. It adds up quick and can prove to be challenging trying to stay ahead of it. In Ag Science, we learned about the United Nations Sustainable Develepolement Goals and how they relate to us. Then we created word clouds that showcased which goals were most important to us as a class. Then, we went through each goal, looked at them from a local scale to a national scale to a global scale. This was really cool to see the students have the same beliefs and interests. Really being able to see that common interest of food security and being able to connect that back to the unit. Ag 2, we were talking about pesticide residues and looked at how they can quickl...

Wow! This week was extremely exhausting but also so rewarding! National FFA Week was a huge success at CASH! The amount of participation from so many different students made the week totally worth the effort. From taking pies to the face and wearing orange for #KindlerStrong or just an ordinary school day with our students being proud to wear their official dress. Words can not express how much fun and how proud I am of all of these students in this program. We started our week as Camo and Flannel Monday! So many students participated along with so many teachers in the school who really support CASH FFA. That night we tie-dyed shirts because Friday was tie-dye day! We stayed after school, played music and just had fun! Tuesday was official dress! The students wore their blue corduroy jackets to school. It was so cool seeing all of the FFA jackets throughout the school building. That night, we went to the Meadville Hoss's to have dinner with other local chapters ...

Another week in the books! I can't believe how fast this process is going. There are just so many great different things going on. Some of the coolest parts are seeing the student's passion for supporting the program. We have a former student who graduated last year and she is battling leukemia. To support her we have been selling these shirts as a fundraiser and I am still just blown away by the support! We sold over 250 of these shirts! The plan is to have everyone wear them on Wednesday during National FFA Week. I can't wait to see the sea of orange throughout the school next week. Thinking about those words, "Stronger Together" has got me thinking. This student teaching process isn't possible without leaning on those closes to you and going towards your mentors for guidance. Taking advantage of these resources makes you stronger. Not only as a teacher but just simply as a person. I have a tremendous team around me consisting of my cohort members, f...

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...