For leadership class, I had the substitute from Friday leave a note that three of my boys were a little rowdy. We reviewed the classroom expectations and procedures and made it understood that their behavior is not acceptable and that they really need to behave and be respectful to everyone in the room. Most of the boys just need one direct comment to curb their behavior that does not comply with the classroom expectations but the one boy just likes to push my buttons. It is frustrating and kind of difficult because I really like this student, he is nice and charismatic and has a lot of really good and thoughtful responses.......he just talks a lot and takes his phone out.... and today he came back from lunch last....I'm and going to keep working with him and try to get him to calm down with the negative behaviors but keep the others up. I moved his seat in his pod so he is facing the wall and not all the rest of the students in the class, with the idea if he cannot see them and make eye contact he cannot scheme as much. The class and lesson went well today. The students practiced extemporaneous speaking in front of the classroom and attempted to give a 2 minute speech on anything they wanted. They realized how hard that actually is as a lot of them did not even make it a minute. This also turned out to be a really awesome time because each pod also watched out for stuff that the speaker did, such as how many umms and likes they said, if the back pod could hear them, and mannerisms such as rocking and playing with hands that they did. A lot of the students talked about themselves as their topic which was really awesome as well since I got to learn a lot more about them.
Tuesday- Horticultural class went really well. Mr. Stollar was really pleased with how the class went and that it tied into yesterday nicely. The students were really engaged and interested in the lesson. One student kept answering my questions and I had to ask him to let another student answer. We were learning about photosynthesis and I had the students break into groups of three and create a poster presentation on their plant requirement. The students worked really well together and that was when the one student created a valentine for plants. Before they got started we went over as a group about what plants need to survive and one of the students said love. So I put a heart on the board. In his group they had sunlight and they cut a sun out of the paper and he cut out a heart. It was just really fun that they were being creative with their posters. All the students also participated with the presentations and they really seemed to enjoy it.
At Dover the classes Monday and Friday are ten minutes shorter than the other three days... and I forgot about this so my content was done with 10 minutes left and the students were trying to pull my leg on when the class ended. I caught two girls up that were absent from the previous day and then I brought all the students to the greenhouse and we talked about the potting soil and the ingredients in it and how it related to what we talked about in class. I think the students liked being able to see that. Apparently my students also tested me while I was catching the girls up. I was in the shop showing them how to create their seed germination bags and some of the boys were walking around. I saw one grab a piece of metal and I said no no I am not observing you welding, so he put it down and started walking around again. Then him and his friends were standing behind a box so I could not see past their shoulders and I heard a torch light, so I calmly said turn that off and put your hands where I can see them. Apparently, since I didn't freak out and start yelling and get all high pitched, I passed the test and earned some allies. I also apparently know what I am talking about and seem creditable which, according to the students is not the same case in other parts of the building.
For Leadership class the one student I had mentioned previously acted better today, but another child acted worse. And is not as charismatic and talked back to me. That was a little frustrating to deal with especially since I haven't seen this student in a week or more since they were absent and all the snow days. I am really trying to find a positive thing about that individual though because I see a lot of potential in all of my students.
I was introducing the class to SAE's and explaining that they need to be working on one while they are in this class. The students in the ag business class that had SAE's talked about their projects and we also talked about some of the stories from AEE 311. I think they really liked seeing that real life connection. One of the students really got it which really made me excited ( especially since he was a chatty boy from a previous week). At the end of class he asked me what kind of SAE that he could do that was smaller, because some of the stories seemed so large and big. He quickly covered himself and said that he didn't want to do a bad job on it or do something easy, he just wanted some more ideas besides starting his own business or working with a college professor. Some of the students that were not listening to my conservation with the student decided to get up and walk around to a different part of the room, which I did not notice at first and Mrs. B had them sit back in their seats until the bell rang. I am going to try to be more strict tomorrow so there are not all those little distracting factors in the class.
Wednesday - Horticultural class did not go as well as I planned. I had everything prepared last night, all of my materials, all of my copies printed etc. I even reviewed my lesson plan when I got home that night and again this morning before class. But my brain was not working! I felt like I was literally stuttering in the front of the class trying to go though the interest approach. The science experiments showing diffusion and capillary action with the xylem went well, I think. I just wish that the beginning of my lesson went a little better. Two positives though, one student came up to me and said that this is the class with the most hands on experience that he has had, and he enjoys it. This really made me happy that they are linking the material and the projects and seeing the connection there. Secondly, Mr. Stollar told me that one of my students typically puts their head down for every other ag teacher for the whole class and will not do anything for the teachers. This student had not put their head down once and even was engaged in the discussion today.
Important to keep the positives and keep on trucking.
Leadership class went much better today. My interest approach was a speech by Mike Rowe where we analyzed what he did while he was talking and how he was relating to his audience and how he set up his speech. I think this went really well. Maybe the speech was a little too long since it was about 15 minutes, but it encompassed all the information that I wanted to cover. All of the students except for one liked the video, she thought it was too long. The aid even stopped me during lunch and told me how there were no truer words. Below is the video that we watched and we started it at the 13 minute mark.
After lunch we talked about how to write the outline of our speeches and set a due date for the outlines due to me. I gave the students some time to work on memorizing their speeches. The students doing creed had to create a fill in the blank version of the creed. This also gave me time to work individually with the students and talk about what they wanted to write about.
This class today made me feel a lot better about yesterday.
Thursday - SNOW DAY. The technical director came to Mrs. B's classroom after school Wednesday and told me if I am going anywhere this weekend I need to leave now and be safe. So today, I am sitting at my parents house enjoying homemade waffles, drinking tea, and working on school work.
Friday - Today was great! I got to see all my friends and talk to them about their experiences. We are changing so much! All of our student teaching experiences are really bringing everything we have learned the past four years together nicely. The workshops were really helpful and it was great to meet new resource people that can aid us on our journey to "figure out" what we want to do with our lives. The one station upset me because I asked about how much weight transcripts hold. I am kind of concerned about mine since my GPA is not where I want it and I kind of regret not taking care of that when I should have. The one lady said that she personally looks at GPA a lot and transcripts, but she also looks to see how well rounded someone is. I am well rounded, but my GPA is not as good as it could be. It is definitely not a 4.00. This conversation also made me think about Tracy. The first time I interacted with her was regarding my GPA a year or more ago. I was concerned about it then and wanted to talk to people who have graduated and are out in the industry. I posted on my fraternities Little Sister page and she responded to me despite never meeting me before. She then went to explain her personal experiences with GPA and how her school hires new agricultural teachers and that the current teachers get a say about who the district hires; at least in her school. This gave me hope. To aid my GPA I guess I will just do the best I can while student teaching and maybe attend a few Schavers creek classes this spring.
Mr. Foster then shared a very motivational and sad story that almost made me cry. It is soo soo easy to just cast students aside and just focus on the happy, academic students. I am concerned that some of my students do not have the best childhood and upbringing. I want to help them, I am just worried that they will break my heart and there will be nothing I can do to improve their situation. A friend of mine said sometimes all they need is someone to talk to and that they don't necessarily expect help from me, just a friendly face. But that is not how I was brought up. I never had my house to myself. If there was not someone visiting or living with us and it was just my family at dinner it was weird. One of my brothers friends lived with us for a while, a girl that use to babysit us when we were little lived with us, my uncle lives with us sometimes. My mom was even going to drive my brothers friends to colleges for him to tour if he wanted her to. So, with this background, I don't know how I will react if a student opens up to me and I cannot do anything about it. I don't have the means to support anyone except myself.
But, to be positive, I will control the things that I can control and that student will have a good time while they are in my classroom and they will learn something that will be useful to them in the future. It may not be content necessarily all the time but they will learn life skills. They will learn something useful.
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