Week Two: I am officially teaching!

Hello everyone! Week two is officially complete! It's hard to believe how quickly time is passing. This week was a bit abnormal for a few reasons. First, students only had a two-day week. Students had Monday off for MLK day and Tuesday was an inservice day. Then we had a snow day on Wednesday. So Thursday was the first school day of the week and my first day teaching a class (Intro to AFNR). Also, students are in the middle of state testing, so that means block length is shortened from 90 minutes to about 50. Even though there were only two days of school this week, there was a lot to learn an experience! Here are my lessons learned/questions from week 2:

Community is required for a successful ag program.

This week I had the opportunity to attend Penn Manor's FFA Alumni meeting. I enjoyed the meeting because it gave me a chance to meet some more community members as well as see how invested the ag ed program and community members are in each other. There were alumni members from different generations as well as the current FFA President. I always think it's neat to see people serve something larger than themselves, not for personal gain, but because they believe in the purpose of whatever it is they're serving. The alumni take charge of various events throughout the year to help/benefit the Penn Manor ag ed program, and once again it just goes to show how important it is for an ag ed program to be a part of their community. I'm really looking forward to becoming even more involved with the Penn Manor community during my time student teaching.

Agricultural Experience Tracker.

On Thursday at the county FFA meeting, I helped the other ag teachers judge AET records at the county level. I have had a similar experience judging proficiency award applications at the national level in one of my Ag Ed classes. The experience is really valuable for me as a future ag teacher because it teaches you how to fill out AET records correctly so that you can teach your students correctly. Record keeping is an important skill to have and it provides opportunities for awards and such through FFA, but sometimes I sense that it's hard to motivate students to take their record keeping seriously. For all of you experiences Ag teachers out there: How do you promote intrinsic motivation in students to maintain a quality record book?

It's the little things.

Penn Manor just started spring semester this week, and since we have block scheduling that means students start all new classes. I'm teaching an Intro to AFNR class comprised of mostly freshman.  I've been working on learning the names of everyone in the classes I am/will be teaching, and I'm getting pretty close. I also have to keep reminding myself that not all of these students know each other because of how big the school is (whereas in my high school everyone knew everyone). The students in the Intro to AFNR class have been very reluctant to engage and answer questions the past two days - I think it's mostly due to it being the first week of the semester. Towards the end of class while everyone was putting their stuff away I started asking kids what they had planned for the weekend. It was really neat to see their faces light up as they began talking to me about things they had planned and things they were interested in. They also seemed more relaxed and comfortable. I'm looking forward to seeing what next week brings!