From Green Blazers To Blue Corduroys

The Journey of Student Teaching: Day 36 FFA Reflections: Career Development Practice in a University not Like PSU Essential Question for this week: What is something you learned about CDE Practices this weekend? CV FFA ended their National FFA week by jumpin on a bus and going all the way down to Ms Rombergers undergraduate location of Delaware Vally Universtiy. Here the Delaware Vally Collegiate FFA Alumni Chapter hosted a career development event intense practice. Here students got to work together and practice different CDE competitions such as Livestock judging, vet Sciences, floriculture, diary products evaluation, agricultural Mechanics, food Science, and horse evaluation.  The students got to interact with students from three states as they practiced and learned more about the national level competitions that are typically very similar to the state level ones. What was cool about this trip was how close the students have become to me. Instead of me just...

The Journey of Student Teaching: Day 35 Fifth Week Reflections: When Sleep is an Option and so Totally Worth it for National FFA Week Essential Question for this week: What is something you learned while teaching this week? During national ffa week the officers and the committee chairs worked their buts off planning an intense week of exciting activities. So I’ll talk about all of my students everyday and the exciting this they did this week: Tuesday: Celebrate FFA  To kick off celebrate FFA the students wore FFA swag. I put on one of my FFA ties to support the festivities. What I saw this week wasn't all the kids participating but instead multiple kids going, "Darn! I forgot!" Also, it was pretty cool to be the Ag Teacher for a week and be the excited one to see all of the participation in the activities. I enjoyed today because of the excitement I saw in my students on what FFA Week meant to them. Wednesday: Career Success Wednesday the kids ...

The Journey of Student Teaching: Day 35 Seventh Week Reflections: If student teaching didn't challenge me then how could I grow as a future teacher? Essential Question for this week: What is something you learned while teaching this week? In the mid way point of the semester I find myself contencting to the memes on how if you ain’t tired you ain’t a teacher. Especially with this half way mark being the end of the first half of student teaching I find myself being reminded more and more about this quote that we used to describe student teaching. Don’t get me wrong I have had some great lessons. I have. My big thing that I also find myself saying is that as I get into my second half of student teaching I need to not be satisfied with a couple of good lessons and a couple of bad lessons. I need to grow. I know this may sound like I am being hard on myself but I see that if I accept this my students will begin to expect this of myself as well. And to me it’s...

The Journey of Student Teaching: Day 20 FFA Advisor Reflections: When a Weekend of High School Girl's Theme Songs Helped Give me the Confidence to teach in Seven Classrooms Essential Question for this week: What is something you learned while attending an ACES weekend? My experience in ACES May have been a bunch of years ago, or how it feels as I write this blog but to me the big thing is the impact it has had on me as a teacher. For one I was use to seeing students only in the classroom. For example I have about four students in more than one class. But now I had the opportunity of being in charge of ... 40 students at ACES. That’s right - a whole lot of students. The best part about the trip wasn’t the number of students it was getting to see the students interact with each other like I’d hope. I saw that these kids though there were not a lot of students they got a long and had fun. I found myself laughing at how silly they would act together, or maybe those ...

The Journey of Student Teaching: Day 25 Fifth Week Reflections: When Blizzards Mean Crazy Lesson Timing Essential Question for this week: What is something you learned while teaching this week? Context: Monday - Two Hour Delay, Wednesday - No School, Thursday - Two Hour Delay Aside from me determining that school in PA during February should just be cancelled I did get to experience some fun aspects of student teaching this week. One thing I definitely realized this week teaching is that the time in class can be tough to really lay out a solid lesson plan. Two hour delays have made me start to realize that with less time in the classroom some lessons get split into two days instead of one day.  Two of my lessons got dragged out longer but more because with two hour delays the delayed time can drag out a lesson.  One of the benefits of allowing students more time on an activity though is the students really get to show their ability and creativit...

The Journey of Student Teaching: Day 20 Fourth Week Reflections: Teaching a Full Load Essential Question for this Week: What did you learn this week while student teaching? To me this fourth week started out really nerve racking.  Only 3 days into the semester and I will be teaching for a total of 7 out of 9 periods in the day.  To me this was nerve racking more because this made me realize that this was real. With teaching 7 periods what I learned is that I needed to be willing to let the Inquiry and Independent work happen. As the saying goes: When you assume . . . And I probably started last week with that with the students. For example when I hear the word Biotechnology I think that students should have strong scores in chemistry and biology before taking it.  What I didn't plan on was on that in a high school not everything is taught on the level that I learned stuff in high school. And so I started Biotech last week with this feeling of total dread bec...