Student Teaching: Week 9!

This was a crazy week! I got my first touch of what it's like to be a real ag teacher! I was doing things after school Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday night including an officer meeting Wednesday morning! It was a great week to really test my desire to be an ag teacher and take on such a responsibility. Till it was all said and done it just pushed me farther into the career. Spending the day with 110 different kids is exciting and such a blessing but the real blessing is when you spend time outside of school with the kids. That's when the relationships really blossom! I enjoy so much having that opportunity to talk to them and get to know them with out 20 other kids around.

This week I stayed after school late to prepare students for the Public Speaking CDE. Really, I just observed my magnificent cooperating teacher work with the students! It's great opportunity being able to watch her coach the public speakers. The littlest things she does is probably second nature to her but to me sitting there my mind is blown! All I think is that's such a good idea or what made you start doing that or wow that really works!

Thursday night was the public speaking CDE. It was a very upsetting night for Juniata. There was definitely some injustice done to our speakers. And I don't say that because I'm biased, I say that because CDE rules were not followed properly in order to ensure a level playing field for all students involved. However, because of the high standards of Juniata, the kids handled it very humbly. I was very impressed and PROUD of my students as they walked away smiles on their faces. Of course they knew there was a problem but they handled it very well. The hardest part was that my students with Aspergers did an EXCELLENT job preparing for the competition and had an 8 minute and 33 second speech entirely memorized and had hand gestures, and was prepared for questions. He placed 4 out of 5. When I was in FFA and competed in CDEs I was upset when I didn't place well BUT, being an advisor and helping students prepare for events and they don't place where they want to its a much worse feeling, especially when they went above and beyond what was required of them.

But, Juniata will go on, in three different CDEs.

Student Teaching: Week 8!

It's crazy to think that I'm more than half way done with this experience already! As I sit and reflect upon what I've learned in the past 8 weeks my mind is spinning.

What's really bothering me this week is student motivation! Specifically the labeling done by IEPs. I have students with an IEP and I don't understand why they have an IEP. I have students without IEPs and I wonder why they DON'T have an IEP! The educational system is failing students! My students do everything for completion it's never about what they learn only what they have to do and what they're grade is... It's very frustrating as a teacher! I have one student that does absolutely nothing. He sits beside the magazine rack and reads a magazine most periods. According to his IEP he must have teachers notes, so I give him the teacher's notes and he then he doesn't complete the guided notes. So I stopped giving him teacher's notes and he still doesn't do the guided notes. I ask him to do something and (very respectfully) he just says nahhh. According to his IEP he can turn work in anytime until the end of the marking period and can't receive late credit. For a student that lacks ambition that's not a very good way to make him successful! It's a battle that I guess I decided isn't worth fighting, as far as the magazines because he isn't distracting other students and he doesn't read anything he just looks at pictures so my head wants to believe that he's listening... He had an assessment this week and I don't understand is that he did ALL of the math to figure out the ear notching on the piglets, but left the next page blank because its short answer! And the answers to the test were throughout the test! He answered the questions correctly for multiple choice all he had to do was write the answer but he didn't. He's not even doing the bare minimum to get by! And for someone that hates school why not try at least hard enough to get out of it!!

I also have a very unmotivated officer team! My cooperating teacher and I since the beginning of my internship have been questioning the work ethic of our officer team. I from the beginning thought it was poor and now that my teacher isn't teaching she has time on her hands to realize what they are contributing to the chapter, and it's very minimal. When asked to do something they get upset. They want all of the credit for having a 2-star chapter but they don't want to put the effort into making that so for years to come. They don't communicate and they don't care. I just don't know what to do to help make them motivated and care about the success of their chapter!

Student Teaching: Week 7!

I finally feel like I'm getting a hang of this teaching thing. I'm finding new and exciting ways for students to show what they know. I'm finding ways address the multiple intelligence's and as I do this i'm realizing how that when learning is fun for the students it's much more fun for the teacher as well! I'm always excited about what i'm teaching (except wildlife and fishery science) but making the students feel my excitement isn't always easy.

Something I did this week that was really fun was my interest approach for Parliamentary Procedure!! I created a meeting agenda and since most of my officers were in the class we went through opening and closing ceremonies and the items of business to discuss were the information of the class. The students really enjoyed it because it was new fun and an exciting way to learn!

This week I also realized that it’s so much easier to be at school than to not be there! I had my first experience writing sub plans and preparing the students for my absence! According to school policy teachers are not allowed to leave their computers unlocked or give the substitute the access information. So any work given had to be in the form of worksheets or videos, etc. Granted, there’s nothing wrong with this, but this makes things difficult, for me anyway! So after writing sub plans and creating activities for students to do I realize that I have two more days of sub plans to write! It was much easier the second time for sure!

As I begin to make connections with students I begin to realize that there is can’t possibly be a job any more rewarding than teaching! 

However, sometimes those relationships are emotionally a struggle. There are some students that are just happy, all the time and they’re great and then there are students that seem sad all of the time. And sometimes I just have to wonder how much of a front are the students putting on? What are they struggling with at home? Where and who is home? When they strive for so much attention is it because that’s all of the attention they get in one day? Sometimes it’s really tough when I have a student that just talks and talks and talks when I’m trying to do something before or after school or during my plan period but I realize that whatever I’m doing it can wait right now what this student really needs is just someone to talk to even if you have no idea what their talking about.

I really do enjoy teaching and forming connections with the students and as I get deeper and deeper into my internship I am realizing how hard it’s going to be to leave Juniata!

Student Teaching: Week 6!

Throughout my experience I had known that assessments, formal and summative, we’re not going to be my strong suits. This week I found out why. With the 9 snow days we have had the units have been pushed back a week and a half and the unit I did finish was a project. So my first test was this week. I told the students two days prior to and we reviewed the day before.

I do understand that my expectations are very high.

However, I was do not believe that they are impossible to meet.

I am beginning to think that the educational system is doing a great disservice to the students! They believe that education is all about memorization and grades nothing to do with the journey but only the destination!

So I told the students to take time to look over their notes and study their fish “knowbook.” Students choose not to utilize the time for studying. So I asked if they were sure they wanted to begin and if they had any questions and they said nope we’re ready. I said okay then. I knew that there were questions that we went over quickly in class and I knew it wasn’t fair to ask them to identify 17 fish. So on the test I told them they had to identify only 6 fish! And I had all intentions of giving them 3 minutes at the end to utilize their “knowbook” and an article to check answers on their test. I didn’t give tell them at the beginning because I didn’t want them to just wait until this time was given to answer questions. To make a long story short, I had one very disgruntled student that acted very inappropriately. For the first time my patience was tested. I explained that if she had a problem she should approach me individually and not disrupt the other students! I do take partial blame to the assessment because I may not have been entirely prepared as far as giving the students enough time in advance to know and prepare for the test and being prepared with the test that period.

I also had students turn in a final manuscript for their speech. This was my leadership class and I was very upset and disappointed with the students. They had 30 instructional days to complete their speech prior to my arrival, and after receiving a grade for the first manuscript they had a week for making revisions. I graded the first speech very hard to light a fire under their behind! After receiving their speech grade and manuscript grade I had them write a reflection on what they thought of their speech and what they thought could be improved, students did so. After receiving all speeches, reflections and final manuscripts I graded them taking into consideration: the first manuscript, reflection, and final manuscript. Students still did not score high on their manuscripts, the grade they received on the final manuscripts ended up dropping some students grade very, very low. They were very upset with me but for the most part I thought that they deserved the grade they received for their effort. However, knowing that they thought I had failed them wasn’t something I could live with so I gave them the option to grade themselves and write a reflection telling me why they deserved that grade! I told them this was their chance to fight for their grade.

From these experiences with assessments I’ve realized it’s very important for me to clearly explain my expectations! It’s also very important to give students time to prepare for exams and give them something such as a vocab list, or questions, or anything really to be able to say if you know this and are comfortable with this information you’ll do fine on the assessment. I also realized that it’s good to ease their mind before the exam. Talk to them explain what’s on the test, explain that it’s not hard they’ll be fine; basically anything to ease their mind and relax them.