FFA Week and Beyond

This week, I hardly saw the inside of the classroom. Monday was President’s day, which meant we had off. Tuesday I was visiting West Perry for my agriculture program visit. Wednesday and Thursday were both snow days--no school. Friday was the only day this week I was actually teaching. I have picked up more classes and am teaching 6 classes a day now.

Tuesday after my visit to West Perry, I was able to come back to Greenwood and attend the State Officer Night at Hoss’s. I never had the opportunity to participate in the “Meet your State Officer Night” when I was in high school, but I was able to attend once before with Penn State. We had a national officer come to visit the Hoss’s we were at which was such a cool experience for the students. I didn’t come from a strong FFA background, as most people who know me know. I was never involved with other chapters much. I am so thankful for my time with Greenwood and the experiences I’ve been able to have with the FFA.  

On Friday, we had our Greenwood FFA Breakfast to celebrate FFA week. It was quite an adjustment going from snow day to “be at the school at 5am” the next morning. Combine the early morning, with the breakfast and a full course load it made for a 12 hour + day. The FFA Breakfast was my favorite part of the week! I love interacting with my cooperating teachers and the students outside of the classroom. The community support for Greenwood is unreal. It started several years ago as just a teacher breakfast, but it grew into a community based event.

Prior to my time at PSU I didn’t even know we had a week for the FFA. I had never heard of ACES or SLLC or had any realization of all of the things the FFA does. This week, between interacting with students at events like ACES, meeting a national officer during Hoss’s night, the FFA emblems at Tractor Supply and the FFA Breakfast, I began to realize how essential to the students FFA is. It isn’t just a school thing, it is a way of life for these students. My lack of experience with the FFA has given me a fresh perspective where I can try new things and not have a preconceived idea for how they should be. I will admit that I feel a little overwhelmed with the idea of planning chapter events and trips for the FFA. How do more seasoned agriculture teachers balance their teaching and FFA responsibilities. Obviously, FFA is an amazing and essential intracurricular student organization, but how much should a teacher take on chapter responsibilities? How do most school officials view an agriculture teacher’s involvement with FFA? How can I as a teacher develop support for a chapter’s FFA endeavors?

Every Student, Everyday

This week went by crazy fast. We had our pie fundraiser pickup on Tuesday and Beth Winklosky, the student teacher from West Perry come to visit and Friday we went back to Penn State for mock interviews. There was a lot to juggle this week, but as usually, it flew by fast. My parents came to visit this week, and it meant so much to me for them to see where I am student teaching and meet my cooperating teachers. This week we also went to ACES over the weekend. It was my first time there and I had a great time spending the weekend my students and cooperating teachers   

On Thursday when Ms. Winklosky came to visit, she really provided me with some great feedback. One thing I found kinda crazy, was how much I gravitated to my more disruptive students during food science. You never realized how much or how little you interact with a student until you have someone to watch you and point out those things. Beth gave me great feedback on how to manage my students and better organize/ clarify my instructions and reach out to them better. How do seasoned teachers build rapport? I wouldn't say I have students who are dramatically misbehave, but there are some issues I'd like to better address in some of my classes. Are there any best practices for developing good conversation with students to get to know them without getting off of class? 

I was surprised to learn that there were some students who got overlooked at times by me and that some students were causing me to mediate their behavior too much. What are some best practices for making sure you give all students a voice and prevent "that group" of students from draining all of your attention? I'd like to be more firm in my discipline, and will work on that as a goal this week. I struggle between teaching and the mental energy associated with it, that I don't always notice how much those little things get away from me. One thing I struggle with, is knowing how many "small offenses" you should let roll off some before you need to have a conversation with a students. If your students aren't paying attention to you, sometimes you gotta ask yourself if you are paying attention to them. For an inexperienced teacher, I think this is something that takes time.

ACES Weekend

This weekend I attended the Agriculture Cooperation Establishes Success (ACES) FFA conference. This was my first experience at ACES, and I was able to experience it through the lens of an advisor. It was such an awesome opportunity to spend the weekend with Greenwood and have some time to spend outside of the classroom with the students and my cooperating teachers. One of the highlights of the weekend was spending time with the other advisors and getting a feel for how to serve as an advisor during an FFA trip. I got to attend a NOCTI training session and learned about student assessment with NOCTI. After the training, Ms. Winklosky and Ms. Herr and myself went downstairs to watch the student workshops. It was so much fun to see the students in action, and be in a space where they can interact with other students.

The banquet that night was a great way to spend some time with my students and with the West Perry crew. I enjoyed watching the students at West Perry talk with the students at Greenwood and introduce themselves. We had a great time exchanging stories and interacting with each other's students through dinner. Following the meal was the embarrass your teacher event. My students volunteered me to go forward and we were challenged to ask each other questions without answering them. After that, teachers were called up again for the karaoke and KP was called up to sing. When Mr. Clark came back in they decided to swap KP for him. It was such a great time watching everyone sing and hearing the students go crazy for their advisors.

After the dinner, we had the dance that night. It was so cool to spend some time outside of the classroom and enjoy a night with the students and other advisors. Our students really wanted us to jump in and dance with them, and we had a blast dancing in the conga line together! Just the energy of the students was so much fun, and really reminded me why I enjoy working with them. We ended the night with some group reflection with the state officers.

This weekend was my first night doing courtesy corps with Mr. Clark and Mr. Hines. We had a pretty chatty hallway and had to remind some students what curfew meant. The next morning we topped the weekend off with some breakfast and a fun placemat designing community service project. It was a great weekend and gave the students and ourselves some time outside of school.

Over the weekend, I had a few questions running through my head. How do advisors deal with discipline issues on a trip if they arise? How do you balance interacting with your students during fun events like this, but maintaining the authority of an advisor- especially as a young teacher? How do you discipline your students when needed, but balance that with being fun? How many trips should you undertake as a first year teacher?

Student Led Learning

I have been kind of struggling on what to reflect on each week during my student teaching. I write down notes about each lesson and how the day went and what I would improve upon, but nothing I'd say was worthy of a blog entry. Out of this week, one thing I can say I have explored most is that learning can be both achieved and evidenced in so many ways. I've noticed that students don't always retain what I teach, and sometimes retain things I had no idea they would even remember overnight.
 This week, I tried to challenged myself to speak as little as possible from the front of the room. I wanted the students' input on how they want to learn and evidence that learning to me. I started this week with an intro to lipids in food science where the students tested various materials to determine if they made a good lava lamp. They were able to experiment and explore to their heart's desire and record what they noticed. I was actually surprised by what they kept track of, and the connections they made. I noticed my higher achieving students were the ones who were the most bent on finding the "right" answer, while my often trouble students kept their phones down and started mixing and matching compounds the entire class period. I really noticed by this seemingly simple exercise how my students learned. There were the "look it up and follow the directions we read carefully" students, contrasted with the "just try it out and see what we do" students, along with everyone in between.

By nature of food science, I have a lot of questions asked throughout the week that I can't answer myself, but we lack the time to explore during that class. Dr. Foster had suggested making a space to capture our thoughts and questions and review during the week. I came up with the idea during lunch on Friday to have the students post questions into a tri-fold display "food cupboard" that we will review at the end of the week. I had never tried this, but I asked them what THEY wanted to do with the questions throughout the week, and how we can make Friday into a food "mythbuster" day. They came up with several ideas on using the cupboard and how to evidence student accountability with the Mythbuster day. on Monday they will design the board and the procedures for posting in it each week.
Throughout my teaching, especially in food science, I've been exploring ways I can put the accountability for classroom learning on the students. I've been asking them what projects they would like to work on, or what ideas we have on this or that topic. Even at the start of the semester I asked students what they wanted to learn about food and I had a wide variety of topics and some actual interest in the class. I've also tried to develop topics that allow students to explore things without too much direction from the teacher, like the lava lamp one. Another student teacher and myself looked over some of our lessons and tried to identify ways we could allow the students to have better investment and control over their learning. Sometimes all it takes is to think of the best way you can get out of speaking at the students, and put it back on them. The trick is to provide limited, yet explicitly clear instructions for whatever they are doing. I hope going forward I can look at ways to allow for student autonomy and inquiry based learning, by removing myself from the front of the room and to my students' side to engage and educate them.

Put the Pro in Improvise

Flexibility is just one of those things you can't have in short supply in your classroom. Each day of teaching presents new challenges, and requires a little planning parkour from time to time. This week started with Greenwood getting a PDE Ag program audit on Monday, followed by an early dismissal on Tuesday, which led to a two-hour delay on Wednesday and left us out of school on Thursday. All of this left me to face Friday with the attempt to get everyone back on track without hardly any motivation from the students to be there to begin with. There was a student who, when asked how her week went, replied with "I could have skipped." Who wouldn't want to skip on the Friday after a snow day? I had to change my lessons around some to fit the changing class times. I had students absent and had to decide how I plan to catch them up.

In keeping with the theme of improvising, I decided we should have a little fun on Tuesday due to the early dismissal and shortened class period. We are learning about carbohydrates, so I thought it would be cool to mix sulfuric acid and table sugar to discuss dehydration reactions. KP and Clark and our custodian Mr. Sowers all attempted this the night before. After waiting for what felt like forever, KP decided we should add more sugar, which sped up the reaction some. The carbon "snake" started to emerge from the steaming beaker we decided to take it outside. It was cool, but nothing crazy. The next day when I attempt it in a room full of high school students it reacts pretty quickly and fills the entire hallway and classroom with burnt-sugar smelling fumes. We rush outside with the hot beaker on our tray and have to vent out the hallway. During the performance through the hallway someone managed to toss their lunch up which really made for a crazy class. 

Although craziness and changing circumstances can put a damper on your plans, it makes for an interesting profession. There is a reason they say variety is the spice of life. I've learned through this week that sometimes things come out of nowhere
and you have to deal with them as they come down  the pipe. I've learned how a 3 week unit can easily become a 5 week unit depending on the weather. I've also learned to plan with a pencil that has a good eraser. My goal this week is to get back on track and as a future lifeline, have a few "snow day" lessons that can be used on those crazy schedule days. Weeks like these push us to get creative when it comes to creating material for shortened classes, and h