Week 9

Monday 

8th Grade - I observed them again today. They are a different breed, I swear. It will really be interesting. It is cool that I get so many different experiences to really be able to compare middle school vs high school. I will start teaching tomorrow as we review for the animal terminology quiz.

Leadership - Today we started my community based unit, Developing 21st Century Ag Advocates. Today we learned about local and global hunger. For my interest approach I split the class into highly developed countries, developed countries and developing countries. We had our own version of a hunger dinner, expect it was with peanuts and m&ms. A student in the ag business class gave my starving countries cup cakes which I had to confiscate! They are supposed to be starving and sharing three peanuts among them...not eating cupcakes! We then read 5 different stories of situations across the world about starving families. I had the students read the stories and another students capture their responses on the board. We then looked up hunger statistics. I ran out of time for my lesson because we had a two hour delay today. :(

Ag Mechanics - I talked a lot with my aunt, who is a teacher, this weekend, and we think the best way to approach the class is to have it really student centered and have a lot of it be inquiry based. Now, I have changed my bellwork to an essential question or two of what they need to be able to answer by the end of class while they take apart their engines. Today they were supposed to be able to tell me why their flywheel was important. I told them to look it up in their manuals and figure it out. I then went around to the different groups and quizzed them on it and explained why it is important and how it works. There are so many different engines in that class...they really need individualized instruction. They also pay attention better since they are learning more in a one on one environment and they have the engine right in front of them to be able to reference and be like ohhh so that is what she is talking about.

Tuesday 

8th Grade - So today I taught 8th grade for the first time. We reviewed the terminology for the animal science quiz they have tomorrow. I also got to be a real teacher all by myself. Mrs. B had to give a presentation for the high school students to help them pick classes for next semester. She got someone cover her 8th grade class while I taught. However, I think that the person that was supposed to cover forgot, because they came for the last ten minutes of their second period. The classes went great though. I had them review their notes then we did a group activity where they had to fill out the chart without their notes and without talking. Every thirty seconds they switched the paper and either filled in the charts or changed their classmates answers depending if they were correct or not. After that we started reading the second part of their notes to learn more about the uses of animals. I had the students read then we talked about the products that come from the large animal industry.

By the end of class I was really happy with how everything went. I also got super hyper and happy with how the day went and Mr. Stollar and the one girl that has an independent study during our prep period laughed at me and said they wanted some of my happiness.

Leadership - I am not happy with how this class is going. I feel like I am not as good as a teacher as what I was when I first started with them. I think I need to be more confident. It is not that I am feeling unconfined, but sometimes Mr. Stollar tells me that I am too relaxed and too chill. I need to be more assertive like how my horticulture students told me for my teacher surveys. Mrs. B wrote down that one of my star children gets me derailed. Which he can be quite distracting. I think I need to be more organized about....I don't even know. I feel that it is hard to get class started since I wait for them to finish their bellwork then I have to regain their attention and ag business is talking, but I need them to focus on me rather than what the other class is doing. I just need to be better with this class. I think it will go better the next two days because we are doing similar things as to what I did in horticulture class, so I will have already taught it once.

Ag Mechanics - This class went really well today. My one student that is typically so loud and just so full of energy was actually quiet today. It kind of freaked me out. But later on in the class he called me over.... and his repair manual was open without me asking! He was having troubles getting his cam gear out of his engine. I helped him look up the directions in the repair manual and together we looked at how to do it and I told him to try it and I would come back later. He got it out by following the directions. I was so proud of him for going to his repair manual first rather than asking me. Another group with a techumseh engine had a part on it, I have no clue what it is, we couldn't find it in the repair manual, we worked on it for a long time, none of us could figure it out, but one of the senior boys that has work release was in the shop working on homework for another class was in there and I called him over since he liked to tinker with things. He solved our problem in two seconds. The students I was working with and myself all did a face palm at the same time. How on earth had we missed that simple step??

The really good thing about ag mechanics I think is that the students are realizing that I don't know everything... but that it is okay, because I will work with them and help them look up things in the repair manuals and we will find the answers together. They sometimes tease me like "you don't know what this is??" and I'm like dude, I have never worked with a techumseh or a honda engine before. And they let me go and we figure it out.

The one problem today in class was that one group was not doing their work. And these students are the ones that are really "interested" in small gas engines. They had worked on a truck for the first part of class, but didn't ask me about if they could or not and when I asked them about it they said that they asked Mr. Stollar because he is the real teacher. I said no, I am the teacher until I leave in April, you have to direct those questions towards me. I don't know what to do about those two. I am going to make them work closer to the other groups tomorrow.

Wednesday

8th Grade - So I couldn't really speak today. I kept saying words wrong and kind of slurring them together. Don't worry, it was just a Jeanne moment, not anything else. A student said goggles as something that people typically wear for food safety and I started writing google and we had a laugh about not writing google. They had a good time taking their quizes and a lot of them finished quickly and correctly. The girls are really funny, they hush the boys in the class. One of the boys asked me if he was my favorite but I told him I am not allowed to have favorites. I was honestly nervous about teaching 8th graders but it is going really well so far. Although, I guess it is the honey moon period for them. Hope it stays positive.


Leadership - Class went well today. It was a CDE day so we were learning about agronomy. I four stations set up around the room. One where they had to look up their homes on the soil maps, another where they had to prep for a lab tomorrow, another where they practiced using the soil triangle, and lastly one where they completed a soil ribbon test. The students were mostly on task. Well, they all were expect for one individual who typically is not on task. However, I had a participation grade today and whenever I caught him off task he lost a point. By the end of class he was actually being focused. Another student that I use to have problems with, I sat her with a group of just girls and I am getting a lot more out of her. She is doing well. I think the students liked being able to do different hands on activities and I hope that this class can really start improving.

Ag Mechanics - Today we started to learn about carburetion. I had two of the students attempt to demonstrate a venturi, but they did not have a good enough lung capacity. After we went over the basics of carburetion, we went out to the shop. Three groups are done and they started to help the other groups as well. The students that I had issues with yesterday, apologized to me today, which is very mature of them. They said that they didn't mean it the way it sounded. They asked me for help with getting the cam shaft out of the engine today and I told them to look it up in the repair manual. They then at least got a repair manual out, and said that even another student got it out yesterday and was using it without me having to prompt them. They asked that student to help and I don't think they looked it up correctly, but group collaboration is good as well.

Thursday 

8th Grade- Class went well today. We went over how to ear notch pigs and how to correctly read them. I don't know how to relate to 8th graders, they are a different breed. They have a lot of energy....and it isn't negative energy...they are excited to learn this information. I need to join them in their excitement and need to be a little more chipper in the morning.

Leadership - We worked through our lab work with the different soil textures and layers. I am starting to really come down on a student that is always messing around on my class. I am trying not to give him an inch and trying to get him to work harder in class and try to make him not mess around so much. After that we went through a powerpoint and related it to our lab. There was also a sexual joke in class without the student meaning to, and the whole class started laughing. I forget what exactly I said, but Mrs. B left a note on my desk saying that I handled it well.

Ag Mechanics - I had emailed a Penn Tech Professor to ask him how a student should prepare to go to college and today I finally got an email back. I gave it to the student interested in diesel mechanics and told him to read it. I didn't really talk to him that much about it, but I wanted him to process it and think about it, then if he wanted to, we could talk about it. I helped other students take apart their engines. Today was kind of a relaxed day, some rest and relaxation. We then went to an assembly with the whole school. There was a teacher band which was really cool!


Friday

 If I was at school I would have been planning and working on grades from the previous marking period. Instead, I was in State College for the second student teaching workshop. It is kind of insane that we only have five weeks left in our cooperating centers. I know that it is going to just fly by. I really hope I am affecting my students in a positive way. I am going to throw myself into these next few weeks. The student teacher conference was really helpful and beneficial as we helped each other with lesson plans and learned about and practiced some of the many hats that teachers wear.