A Whirlwind of a Week!

This week has been a true whirlwind, as we have some major events and deadlines approaching. Due to a couple snow days, and in-service days this was my first official full week in the classroom and my schedule is filling up for the weeks to come. Some big moments from this week include picking up my first class, visiting the mobile ag lab, and supporting some of my students at the varsity basketball game.

I am still getting used to the whole feeling of being the "teacher" in the classroom but it become more "real" this week as I picked up my very first class. I started teaching an agriculture careers unit in my Ag 1 class. As I reflect back on the week I have come to realize I may need to make a couple changes in my lesson plans for this specific unit. After getting to know my students a little better I have come to realize that what I thought was a class of freshman due to it being "Ag 1" is actually a mixed group of freshmen, a junior, and a senior, oops. In order to keep all students on the same track while also making sure that the content is interesting to all students, I find myself reflecting on what changes I can make for up coming lessons.

One of the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau's Mobile Ag Science labs made a visit to Central Columbia's Elementary school this week. This was my first time seeing the mobile Ag Lab and I was able to take three of our FFA officers to interact with the younger students. The officers were put on the spot to "teach" a lesson on farming and nutrients in the soil, while completing the "Farm
Charm" lab. It was awesome to see each of the officers interact with the younger students, as each of them have an interest in teaching agriculture.

I am a firm believer that in order to truly get to know the school community you have to go to a sporting event. I attended the boys varsity basketball game and my beliefs were definitely right. I learned that the Blue Jay fans have some serious school spirit. I truly felt like part of the community as I sat in the stands cheering on our Blue Jays. I look forward to attending many more sporting events during my time here.

This week has me thinking about my summer reading "Juggling Elephants."This week came full force as we are finishing up FFA scholarships, prepared for Leadership Development Events (LDE) and Career Development Events (CDE), the 8th grade visit, and are already plan for whats to come during National FFA week. I've come to realize in my short time here that the work of an ag teacher is never complete and the time truly flies by! I cannot believe that week 3 has already come to an end but I am excited to see what's in store for the coming weeks.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Rising Stars At Central Columbia High School

Image
Supervised Agricultural Experiences (SAE) are an important entity to agricultural education. As I mentioned in previous blogs a true agricultural education program is comprised of three very important components; Classroom/ laboratory instruction, FFA, and SAE. SAEs are programs created by students to explore their interests in a specific agricultural area. These programs allow for a hands, on real world experience, while developing life skills. Students can choose one of six different SAE areas to develop their program around. “An SAE is a catalyst for personal growth, career development, and responsible citizenship that leads to individual, group and societal benefits not possible through formal education alone” (“Jig Saw.”2005) SAE is truly a unique aspect of agricultural education, allowing students be creative and cultivate their own learning. Students at Central Columbia High School in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania are doing just that, developing programs that are pushing  them ...
Read more

Developing a Team

Image
Forming, Storming, Norming , and Performing , where are we at in the process of student teaching? I took some time this week to reflect on our studies this past fall. We learned about Bruce Tuckman's model and discussed how the model would look in our future classrooms. We discussed how these are the stages to making an effective team, my team may seem a little different than maybe a sports team, never the less my students, my cooperating teachers, university supervisors, and myself make a great team. As my time at Central Columbia is coming to a close here in a just a few short weeks I found it only fitting to take a look back at how far we have come over the last 13 weeks.  Forming: While we started forming long before the first day of student teaching, the majority of events took place during my first few weeks of student teaching. The first few weeks were pretty laid back, all of my students were polite and well behaved, still trying to figure out how to act arou...
Read more

A Place to Call Home

Image
How is it possible that the moment I waited for my entire college career has come so quickly. The first week of student teaching has come and gone. As I reflect back on this week, I can confidently say Central Columbia is undeniably the perfect fit to complete my student teaching experience. There's one word that continuously comes to mind when I reflect on my first week becoming apart of this community, home . Both in and out of the classroom I felt that I truly belong here. Not a single day has gone by that someone hasn't checked in to make sure I had everything I needed, made sure I knew where something was in the community, or checking that things are going well in my new home. I continuously found myself meeting new people who continued to tell me to reach out to them if I would ever need anything. I was greeted everyday this week by a student or a new teacher in the hallways at school with a "hello," "how's your day going," or "i hope your d...
Read more