Effort Not Ability


What a week it has been! I have gained some really great insight into what it is like to be a "real" teacher, snow days and all! We started the week with an in-service day completing API training with the entire school district. Meanwhile on Tuesday I experienced my first snow day as an educator, followed up by yet another snow day on Wednesday. I learned that snow days look a whole lot different on the educator side of things. Which lead to my first obstacle of student teaching, learning to go with the flow as our schedule was pushed back two days.

The API training was eye opening in some aspects! I made a realization while I was there that Ag Ed at Penn State has truly prepared us for what was ahead. While some of the ideas that were brought to the table were new to veteran teachers, we have been learning them all along. For example I could not believe that only 4% of educators post their objectives for their students to visualize. It's incredibly important for students to see the end goal for everything they are doing, it gives purpose to each activity they do in the classroom. I took away the Serial Positioning strategy which explains that the beginning and end of class are crucial to a students learning, often being the point in the class where they obtain the most information. Therefore, the middle of class should be comprised of more beginnings and ends, who would have thought? The speaker also brought up a great point that as educators, coaches, etc. we need to be doing a better job of praising effort and not ability. If a student is giving an honest attempt at something, we should continue to give them praise! In addition, he shared the 3 Power Words in teaching.

The 3 Power Words of Teaching
1. Consistency: Students react best to a form of consistency in the classroom, while it's important to offer variability, there should be some form of consistency across the board.
2. Specificity: Material and expectations should be direct and to the point leaving little room for gray area.
3: Organization: As an educator if you expect your students to be organized, you to should be leading by example:

These power words truly came into play as we finally returned to school after two snow days, that made for six day break all together for the students. As for me I realized there really isn't such thing as a snow day for teachers, I continued to work on lesson plans and get organized for the coming weeks ahead. As the students returned to the classroom they needed to be guided back in to the consistent schedule and reorganize what needed to be done as the end of the semester is near. Overall, I had to learn how to reorganize my thoughts as well as my teaching schedule was pushed back two days in the process. In my short time here I have learned that schedules are going to change often and I have to learn to be flexible while also being prepared for what is to come next.

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