Week 3 of Student Teaching: Check!

This week I completed my first full week of teaching! State testing finished up on Tuesday, so I'm teaching a full 90 minute block now. I think I'm still getting used to the schedule of an ag teacher because I'm exhausted every day, but I'm learning lots! Here are my takeaways from the week:

1. Always stay one step ahead of your fastest students.

On Wednesday our goals for the day were to finish up the activity from the day before, set up AET accounts, and start the next activity. After the Warm-up, I talked about our goals for the day and had everyone get to work on finishing up yesterday's activity. Some groups finished much faster than everyone else. I was planning on doing a group demonstration on how to set up AET, but I realized that probably wasn't going to work out well. Thankfully, we were able to send kids who were done back to the back tables to work with Mr. Fellenbaum and set up their AET accounts. Some students who already had AET accounts also helped their classmates. After class I talked with Mr. Fellenbaum and while everything worked out, I should have probably had everyone set up their AET accounts first thing in class. After I could have briefly introduced the next activity so that when students finished the activity from the day before they could have immediately began their next task. This coming week my goal is to take my planning one step further and make sure there is always something for faster groups to work on. On the other hand, I also learned the importance of giving students time limits for tasks. Without time limits, students feel no pressure to stay focused and activities can often take longer than they need to. While you don't want anyone to get left behind, you  also can't make the rest of the class wait on one person/group to completely finish up. Including times in my directions will hopefully keep everyone moving and more focused.

2. Building relationships with parents is important.

Thursday night was Parent's Night at Penn Manor, which means that parents have the opportunity to visit the teachers their child has for the semester and learn about the classes they're in. I really enjoyed meeting some of my students parents and talking with them. As a teacher, parent's night is a chance for you to share about what ag ed is all about (aka - Intro to the Three Circle Model 101) as well as getting to know more about your students through their parent's perspective. At one point during the evening a couple came up to me to talk about their daughter, whom I have in my Intro to AFNR class. She is taking the class because she LOVES horses and wants to take the Animal Science classes offered through the Penn Manor ag ed program. They wanted to know more about my experience at Penn State, and if there are many job opportunities in the animal science/equine industry. I was so excited to share about various paths/careers you could pursue in the animal science, as well as share about opportunities at PSU for students interested in Animal Science. Ideally, teachers and parents should act as teammates that are trying to help a child grow and succeed. I'm looking forward to meeting more parents in the coming weeks!