From Green Blazers To Blue Corduroys

2nd Period Animal Science Defining the Why As I walked out the door on Friday I could help but remember that this is the end.  I successfully completed student teaching.  As I drove the hour and a half back to berks county I couldn't help but think to myself a couple of reflective questions. What was the point of student teaching? " The only source of knowledge is experience ." I think the student teaching experience taught me that the most.  The parts of a lesson I undervalued were things that in the beginning I struggled at.  Something that made an impact on me though, was being able to sit there and work on it. We go to college for all those years but we don't get a chance to demonstrate to ourselves teaching till you are teaching seven class periods in a day.  I think I gained experience and that was important.  In college we are told to be "Dewey Learners" but it isn't until student teaching does the concept of Learning by Doing really h...

Finishing the Final Week Strong Planning for my final week of teaching I am giving back two classes, Animal Science and Food Science.  In theory this makes sense because my contract was to teach till the point I got and then hand them back over.  I will say I am going to miss teaching the students.  The struggle I had this week though was a classroom management issue which I found myself having no guidance on dealing with. I had two students decide to start shouting at each other and even though I told them to knock it off they proceeded to continue shouting at each other.  I found this to be a frustrating situation because this was my final day in that class. I did everything I was trained to do and yet part of me feels like I should have escalated it from a warning to a write up.  I hope to move forward from this instance and focus on the positives of teaching. I am excited and nervous to be wrapping up this week.  My game plan is to have 15 more suc...

Weekly Recap: Being Decisive. Being Meaningful. This week I had my final formal observation.  One of the big points that Dr. Foster made is I need to be more decisive in my directions. thinking back I have found that often I struggle the most with being decisive and giving clearly expected directions.  I think part of my difficulty has just been getting use to being in the "teaching shoes."  For 5 years I have been the student and now this semester I am the teacher.  I need to adjust a bit more on giving clear instructions and expectations while I am teaching. It has been a difficult challenge for me trying to better predict where the challenges lie for students to understand a set of directions.  I also realize now that I often say the words would like you too when I really mean I want you too.  I need to not be afraid of being direct to my students in what is expected for all projects and directions.  I think as a student teacher this has be...

Running my First FFA Trip: Mr. Dietrich is in Charge at SLLC During Week Twelve Student Teaching Day 60: Weekly Reflection Objectives of the blog: Reflect on this weeks experience This week was a little intense. Here was the run down: Sunday - Tuesday: SLLC Wednesday: Snow Day Thursday: 2hr delay (taught for a total of 3 hrs.) Friday: Student Teaching In-service So what was my big take away this week?  I would say it was SLLC.  Why? I was given control as to what we were doing while at SLLC.  Originally we had planned that I would be the primary chaperone on the CV Spring Break Trip.  That trip was unfortunately cancelled.  As a result it became my job of planning the minor details of the trip. So what did I do?  I learned the details behind getting things such as school vans, registering school trips, how to get permission forms out, the list is long but it can get done at reasonable times.  A great tip I learned is take a...

Working on improving teaching objectives and teaching goals in Week Eleven Student Teaching Day 55: Weekly Reflection Objectives of the blog: Reflect on this weeks experience With a completion of Week Eleven I am starting to gain confidence back into my lessons everyday. One of things I've been doing that a little different each week now than prior is I have been writing out the different strategies that I am going to use in a class as well. I am not longer just writing down my bell works, ticket outs, learning objectives, like I was weeks prior. I am not including things which make my plans for each week "mini-lesson plans" just without the whole summary of learning and all of the finer details.  The real problem: Learning how to eat multiple "frogs" at the same time I have found this to help me because I can look at my overall week and reflect on how each day has gone and from there come up with a game plan on what my next week will loo...

The Journey of Student Teaching: Day 45 Mr. Dietrich vs Seniors and Their Senioritis Essential Question for this week: What is something you learned this week while student teaching? This week I have begun to detect the worse contagion in the senior students out there: I find it very intriguing how some of the students look at what they are learning like "Oh I am almost done and I should just not do anything." And then I have to think about ways I can get them motivated. This has also been a fun challenge for me as well. I often find myself trying new ways to keep the class engaging.  For example when introducing methods of creating GMOs with the seniors I found it to be easiest when they each looked up one type and then shared out-loud something that they learned. Of course now the comment made in the classes are: "Mr. Dietrich, when are we going to be back in the lab?" I also found ways to connect to students even more and make the things...

The Journey of Student Teaching: Day 40 Weekly Reflection: How weeks are filled with ups and downs Essential Question for this week: What is something you learned about this week? Trying to get into the flow of teaching is like sailing on the sea. There will be ups and downs.  Some days are going to go really good, while other days are going to go poorly.  Being a student teacher is learning how to address those ups and downs as you go.  The hard part I have found about student teaching is how to remind myself that I am a good teacher and not let a single bad lesson chop up the seas for the rest of the day. Though I have been at this for a while now my biggest challenge is my students voicing that a lesson is bad. Instead of them saying anything I have found that more often than not my students prefer to simply tap out and quit learning.  I have found it tough then to get the students to voice their concerns with me or their confusion.  So...

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 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...

The Journey of Student Teaching: Day Five First Week Reflection: Total Three Circle Immersion at Cumberland Valley Essential Questions for Today:  Look back and Reflect upon your experiences of Week One. Looking back to week one I can't help but begin to understand the importance of the three circle model and getting students to follow it.  In college we are told "Use the Three Circle Model" but we never truly see the 3 Circle model used.  What I found value in this week was I got to interact with both Agriscience Teachers and see how their system implements the 3 Circle Model.  Intro to Agriculture Class Talking About Hereditary Traits in Humans Classroom Instruction / Laboratory Implementation - Something I learned here is students will make connections that you don't realize are connections.  One of the students said in the Animal Science Dissection Activity that the spleen looks a lot like the sponge used to water hermit crabs....