What are the official FFA colors?: Student Teaching Week 7

National blue and corn gold. How is this relevant to my weekly reflection blog? Well, let me tell you. This was National FFA week, a time to celebrate and appreciate everything FFA. At the end of the week we had Ag Olympics which involved the entire school. During the activities there were a few trivia questions that were asked. One of which being what are the official FFA colors? The student who answered that question was one of the 8th graders that had just gone through the FFA unit of my class. A couple of the other trivia questions were answered by other students from MY 8th grade class. I WAS SO PROUD. It made me smile from ear to ear knowing that a lot of that knowledge was thanks to my teaching.

It was a fun week, but once again it wasn't a full one. However, the days we were in session I had the opportunity to dress up in some pretty fun stuff.

Monday: Pajamas
Tuesday: Flannel
Wednesday: Teacher/Student swap day (that day was cancelled)
Thursday: AMERICA day
Friday: FFA/Ag shirt day

It was awesome to see students participating and finding enjoyment in the week immersed with FFA. I have started to find a basic groove with interactions with my students and I am building relationships with them that I know I will cherish forever.

However, even though I am building those awesome relationships I have a couple students that are very negative and claim the don't like agriculture and just look at everything in a negative light. It brings me down to see such negativity. For example the one student scoffed at my bellwork, simply because she didn't like the phrase bellwork and thought that bellringer sounded better. I'm trying to roll with the punches, but it's difficult to reach some students.  I just keep my head up, every day is a new day and I work every day to say at least one thing positive to these negative students everyday.

To my readers:
How would you motivate students that are just consistently negative?

How do you get students who refuse to do things to do them?

Just a day and a half: Student teaching Week 6

Pennsylvania never ceases to amaze me when it comes to bad/crazy weather. Thanks to the wonderful Pennsylvanian weather we got out early on Monday, then had 2 days off following that and THEN I had to be back on campus Friday for a seminar with my cohort. With all this happening I taught for a whopping day and a half. However, I am now almost at a full load of classes with every class but 1st period on my plate.

I came to learn quickly that not every first day with a class always a walk in the park. One of the periods I picked up on Thursday I had to raise my voice to be able to establish my expectations for the class. I never would have thought I was going to need to lay down the law for a first day experience with a class, however here I am.

Since, I was out of school Friday one of the things that I had to do was leave behind substitute lesson plans. It was a lot of work trying to piece together the materials that I needed for every single class that I was going to be leaving behind for my "substitute". There is going to be an entire week in March that I am going to have to leave sub plans behind for and I know that is going to be a huge time commitment to prepare for.

While back on campus we went through mock interviews, I believe they helped me out immensely. I thought I knew quite a bit about interviewing, but there were some pieces of advise that were given to me that I had never even thought of before. It was nice seeing how an interview would go from different professions and not just formal Ag Ed. After the interviews though I had a moment of realization that this is real. This is actually happening. The world is soon going to have a Ms. Rachel Bloom in the professional world doing the best she can to make a difference.

To my readers:

In your opinion what is the number one thing to remember when it comes to getting ready for an interview?

What would you recommend to a student/new teacher when it comes to planning out a long length of time for a substitute when you know you're going to be out?

*Blink* Woah: Student Teaching Week 5

Wow I think I blinked. I am now 1/3rd of the way through my student teaching. 5 weeks down, 10 to go. This week the teacher's finally had a full week. However, the students were lucky and had an already scheduled day off on Wednesday. While they were at home I was here going through a training that involved what to do in the case of an active shooter. It's a scary thought that this possibility is a very real thing.

This was my last week with a light load of 2 classes. Starting next week I will be teaching a total of 6 classes. I know once I pick up those classes, my days are going to go even faster than what they are going now. I'm mentally preparing myself to be the most exhausted I have ever been.

What I want to highlight for this week is today I started the 3rd period class. I had a 45 minute period planned with ice breakers and different activities. However, when I did my introduction and mentioned bird banding it peaked an interest. My  day of ice breakers turned into a lesson through me sharing something that I love to do.

Now that I am in the jive of getting to know the students I'm starting to realize that there doesn't have to be big highlights every week, it's appreciating the little things, from a student coming up to you to ask you a simple non ag related question to watching a student really getting into something that they love to do.

Speaking of not ag related, I had the opportunity to attend a pink out game (a game that benefits someone with cancer) for girls basketball and they were great to watch! not wonder Juniata Valley takes such pride in their basketball. They have some extremely talented students in the district. Not to mention the student who coordinated all of the happenings of this large event game was one of our ag students! I'm very proud of her to say the least.

One last thing I want to highlight is I had a student write and article in the paper about me and the eco bottles I had the natural resource class create and it came out in the Huntington paper on February 8th. Not going to lie, it made me smile.

Questions:

How can I fuel a student to pursue their interest, even if it's not ag related?


How do you suggest I balance classes, so that way they don't divide to far apart when it comes to the content I will be teaching?

Winter Vortex what now?: Student teaching Week 4

This week was another short one. With this winter vortex and such I only had 3 and a half days of school to attend to this week. It seems like the cold is just getting colder. With all that being said I am definitely learning to separate the "need to know" and the "nice to know" when it comes to the content I want to cover in my classes.

This week I want to focus a little more on the ECO bottles that my natural resources class had created. We are almost to the point where we are going to finish up observations and transplant the flowers at the top in to pots. One thing that I noticed about the ECO bottles I found really cool was that it didn't just benefit the class that created them. Students that were in other classes or just coming down to the Ag room for one reason or another were constantly asking what they were. I had so many opportunities to teach students about ecosystems, without them having to be directly in the class. The intrigue of the bottles from other students made me so happy! They were even interesting enough that I had a student come to me and ask if she could interview me, so she could submit an article to the paper about them!

Another point for this week I would like to bring up is I had to put my foot down for the first time and had a student start to argue with me. I was trying to be reasonable at first, but after several fair warnings it was time for him to start doing his work. After the 30 second argument, he begrudgingly listened to me and finally started to get something done. Before he left I wished him a good weekend and he smiled and wished me a good weekend in return.

I have two questions to propose to my readers:
How can I as a teacher promote more things that catch student interest even if they aren't in the class?

How do you find a healthy balance between letting your students be themselves, while also directing them to do their work?

I can't wait to see what week 5 has in store!