My Last Week :(

This week has marked the end to my student teaching. I would never have thought I would be wishing that this day was not happening. Today I have to say goodbye to my awesome students and of course my cooperating teacher. Even though I am leaving I plan to keep in touch a lot.

This week I finished up all my assignments and worked with my electrical wiring class as they finished their circuits. I also graded the AgriScience research posters and presentations. Like expected I got from all ends of the spectrum on how elaborate their reports were and how much time they put into their posters for their presentations.

On a plus side I got to help facilitate NOCTI on Thursday. As a student teacher I was mind blown by how many students did not know the basics. I was helping with the injection area and I had some who did not know how to open the syringe packet, did not know to put the needle on before sticking the syringe in the medicine bottle, and more. Are we failing as teachers, is it the students, or is it the test? Personally, if I was to teach and knew students had to take this exam I would hold morning or after school practices to go over items that they might not of had in class for various reasons.

Next week it is back to PSU and I am excited to get to talk to everyone. I am also excited to share some of my best and my action research project that went wrong but, does science always go right?

Administrator Interview

Doing the mock interview with an administrator was not alarming to me with doing the mock interviews at PSU. I did my interview with Mr. Fultz who is one of the assistant principals. He however, is one that looks over the Ag department.

The first question like most mock interviews was tell me about yourself. This question is by far one of the hardest for me because you do not want to say to little or on the flip side talk way too much. The other questions that were asked were, what experience do you have?, What techniques do you use for classroom management?, How do you handle situations where discipline is needed?, How do you use assessment?, and What parts do you put into a lesson plan?. I feel I was prepared for these questions since this is what we have been working for and practicing for through mock interviews. I feel my responses were good and to the point.

I asked Mr. Fultz about their SLO process, what for community support do they have, where they see the Ag program going, and what is one thing Manheim thrives in as a school. What impressed me the most was how Mr. Fultz is very down to each and our interview turned more into conversation because he wanted to me have any questions about the process answered.

For in the future I would need to research the school and do some digging. It helped that I have been at Manheim for four months now and know a good bit about the school and community support. Even though I asked these questions I kind of knew the answers.

Some of my overall thoughts about student teaching

To be honest I did not go into the AEE major to become a teacher. I took the major for communication skills and development. So going into student teaching I did not know what to think. Would I like it or would I hate my life. I mean I love working with kids and adults but was not sure how I felt about the classroom setting.

 

When it came time to student teach I could have been with a normal teacher but I was placed with Mrs. Anderson (This is what she tells me). From the beginning we have clicked from our passion for Ag, love of showing, and scrapbooking. We have been a pair to work together that's for sure. I taught three classes since Manheim Central is on block scheduling which were Intro to Ag, honors mechanics, and AgriEcology. This was out of my comfort zone but I am glad I got to teach these while I had the support from my cooperating teacher.

 

I did figure out that I do not HATE teaching but I do not know if it is what I want to do. It helped that most of my students were great and I connected with them so well. Which like most that is always a concern. This experience has been great and I have tried to take the most away from it plus take in every possible opportunity. Some of these included FFA trips, proctoring keystone exams, helping with the freshmen fundraiser, working with the chapter officers, attending the art show, helping facilitate NOCTI, getting pesticide certified, and more.

 

Working with the three teachers in the Ag department at Manheim has been a true blessing. They have all helped me in so many ways and I would work along side of anyone of them in the future. They all took into account what was in my best interest and what I needed to do. I have had the pleasure of sitting down and talking with numerous administrators and they are all so open and welcoming and their to help you.

 

Event though this all sounds so good it was not always that way. I did have days where I wanted to punch a wall and was frustrated beyond belief due to behavior issues or lack of class engagement, you name it. But one thing you learn it to let it go and do not hold a grudge which was a big lesson for me because I am very good at holding grudges.

Banquet Week

This week was banquet week so for those of you who have been through this either as an officer or a teacher you can probably understand all the feelings and emotions that you go through in just one week. Between getting the slide show done, decoration bought, the script done, and the awards together, dinner menu, and tallying RSVP'S lets just say it has been one crazy week on top of teaching.

This week I am only teaching mechanics due to what is left in others I would not get through half of what needed to be done. I still wont finish out the electrical unit with the mechanics class but they will only be finishing their lamp projects and Mrs. Anderson and I have been co-teaching it that way we were both on the same page.

Next week I will still be working with the mechanics class and finishing up all other projects to bring with me to PSU. I am also going to get the opportunity to help with NOCTI which will be a great experience to see since even as an Ag student in high school I never had to take the test.

With that said once again it is back to prepping for banquet which is tonight!!! I could not be more proud of the officer team I have had the privilege to work with this year and am sure that the newly selected officers will do just the same.

https://storify.com/MeganLego/the-breakdown-of-student-teachingnew-story-1

Does learning style correlate with student engaement.

Coming up with a plan let alone an idea for my action research project was tough. I had one plan and once I taught my AgriEcology class for a week a new idea came and I went with it. This class is made up of 23 students and there is a lot of character in this class.

I planned my populations unit all on visual and hands on activities thinking it would be fun and they would like it better than lecture and boring stuff (at least I think that). Within the first couple days I was in the "I just want to hit my head off a desk" frustration mode. In the middle of activities they would sit down, talk, or throw objects across the room. What was I doing wrong?

I decided after the unit exam for populations I was going to make them take a learning style inventory and from those results tailor the energy unit. From my results I got a top two of auditory and tactile. To change my unit up I added in more lecture and group discussion and than some hands on activities.

To test them for the unit exams I set up the exams exactly the same with 10 true or false, 17 multiple choice, and 3 essays pick two. The exams were worth 74 points. I recorded all their scores for my data tables. After comparing the test results to one another the populations graph suggests that maybe they were bored due to prior knowledge on the concepts which could be what cause the lack of engagement. The energy unit exam scores came out with a more normal distribution bell curve compared to the highly shifted left bell curve with the populations exam.

When I first looked at the results I was like I failed. But, than I remembered that not every thing you do is going to turn out how you expected. I got mixed results where some proved part of my hypothesis (I propose that tailoring lessons to meet individual’s learning style (or modality) will increase engagement, decrease behavior issues, and improve unit test scores) and where others didn't.

Agriscience SAE Visit

As part of my Introduction to Agricultural Sciences class I made it a mandatory project for all students to complete and agriscience research project. For this visit I worked with Kole Hollinger who is a freshman. This student is an active member of the FFA and is very involved with volleyball. He is a twin and is a very kind and caring young man.

We did the visit at Manheim Central High School where his project is being housed in Mrs. Anderson's classroom. We did the visit during homeroom period. Prior to the visit I just made sure that he was okay with myself writing a write up on it.

The students agriscience research project is raising guppies and collecting data on their weight gain. There are two tanks, with four guppies per tank. One tank is getting fed just plain guppy feed where the other is getting that plus shrimp that are also being grown in a separate tank. Once a week he weighs the guppies on a balance and in a clear plastic cup. For weigh purposes he weighs out the water first and than adds the guppies and from there figures out the weight of the four guppies together.

We did discuss that there was a wrench thrown at him during this project. About four days after we got the guppies and had them in their right tanks and weights taken we came back to school on a Monday and were looking at the tanks. Wouldn't you know it, we had babies in one tank. So we got another tank to separate the babies out and two days later the other tank had babies. More for your money I guess or maybe turtle feed.

The record book Kole is using is AET. So he does not have to log on every single day to put in that he fed his guppies I gave him a note books where he logs in what he does daily and later he can go in and add it all to his AET record book.

It has been interesting to see the projects that my students have chosen and how they are turning out. There is never a dull moment with this class.

Visiting another student teacher

On April 2, 2015 I observed Ms. Jenna Moser who is student teaching at Shippensburg High School with Mrs. Biers.  She is currently teaching a full class schedule which includes Ag Mechanics, large animal, leadership, and horticulture.

I will be honest knowing Jenna and how she is the way she handles her students kind of shocked me. I did not expect to see her being rough and tough. It was very nice to see though. This really showed with her Ag mechanics class and the students respected her. This class is a 9 week class which ends on Tuesday so they were finishing up projects that were either woodworking or welding.

Second block the students presented their projects on sheep and goats. I actually, also presented to this class and talked to them about what I do and the goat world. These presentations ranged from both end of the spectrum. It was surprising that this large animal class, most of them have little to none experience with large animals. I spoke to them about my goat business and asking simple questions they had no idea.

It was interesting to see a leadership class that is for basically the officer team to work on FFA items. Today they were planning their lessons to teach to younger students and spent the rest of the period on banquet planning.

The last class of the day was horticulture, where they focused on flower arranging for this day. This is where Jenna really stood out. She became so full of life and excited, this was her element. She took so much pride in getting the flowers for the students and having them create an arrangement before they left for Easter break.

This observation was really neat to see how Jenna student teaching was going and how hers was different from mine. It was also interesting to compare Shippensburg Ag department and classrooms compared to Manheim Central.