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!