The Journey

It has been a long and a short road.  As I am preparing for my final presentation, I keep wondering where the time has gone!  I have been here at Penn State for 3 semesters and it feels like I have been here forever and on the other hand like I just got here.

I know that I have changed and developed as an educator over the past few months.  The first lab didn't go across the way I expected.  I have learned to push out that smile and realized that I have show students how much I care and how excited I am to teach them.

I believe my biggest area of growth is planning, not the actual act of taking the time to plan rather the process.  I have learned how to effectively plan for instruction, the labs taught me about time management and the importance of student engagement.  Students need to be active in the lesson, you cannot talk at them.

The experiences we had with our classmates, in the end was more about identifying our strengths and weaknesses.  I realized that while somethings I did well I needed to have more engaging activities.  These labs prepared me for my experience at Central Mountain.  Micro-teaching was the highlight of my entire semester!  I loved every minute of it and it showed me that I want to teach!

It has been a good journey and process, however it is only the first step!!

Creativity

This was a very unique experience!  I really loved this lab it was cool to think about using $5 to jazz up a unit of instruction.  I found the lab extremely interesting and motivating!

On a reflective basis, I learned a lot about myself while doing this.  I honestly do not consider myself creative however when giving myself guidelines and a purpose then putting myself in a not so normal store when thinking about education..  The magic happened I was able to find a ton of stuff that I could see potentially using in my classroom!  The most interesting thing for me was that I had been in that very same store Monday to get shampoo.  That thing that blew my mind was how even though I was in the very same isles I never saw the stuff the way I did Wednesday.  I realized that I am not a browser, I go into a store and buy the item I went to get and leave.  I figured out that if I go into a store with a specific lesson in mind and not just the broad topic of school I have a lot more success!  So my new plan for creativity is to plan my lesson and determine the content I need to cover and then start to brainstorm ways of making it more interesting.  The final step is to go to a dollar store or even a thrift store and look for item that I could creatively relate to the lesson.

Life Knowledge Lesson

To set the stage, I was incredibly excited to get to teach again.  Last week at Central Mountain had my blood pumping and adrenalin up.  I was ready!  However, I will admit that I wasn't as excited about teaching my topic this time!  The students started the day by having New Castle School of trades in to talk about higher education and the program they have to offer.  Most of the students at Mohawk are repeaters meaning they take more than 1 Ag class per day.  I was to teach the last 2 periods of the day about resumes.  The idea was to make it a career oriented day!  Having a degree in business, I have wrote many resumes and have a pretty good grasp on them.  Thus content knowledge wasn't a problem.  Although, excitement and interest was!  I knew this going into the lesson and hoped to capture it.

As I said I taught 2 classes, these 2 classes couldn't have been any more different!!  The first class consisted of 35 kids, which was the combination of both Mr. Wallace's students and Mr. Schirmer's classes.  This class  was crowded and there were not enough seats, however they were engaged.  They were interested in what I was talking about and since they were primarily juniors and seniors they could easily see why they needed to learn this.

 We started class with the question, "What do you need for an interview?"  The students quickly engaged and I got a lot of good answers.  We then did an  E-moment for the interest approach and had the students draw pictures of 8 skills they had.  This activity was only to take a maximum of ten minutes to draw and share.  However, it took quite a but longer... The students struggled to come up with skills they possessed, I took this opportunity to talk about the plethora of skills that even a young child possesses.  This seemed to spark their minds and they started to draw.  We then discussed the skills in a think-pair-share fashion. 

I then worked through a notecard card activity that basically put their entire resume on a 3x5 card!  Cool activity and tons of great information, but even though 3x5 was the recommended size it was not near big enough!  I would definitely buy the larger notecards if I do this lesson again!  We worked through the notecard and powerpoint presentation and at that got us to the end of class.  I assigned the students the task of doing a resume for homework, I passed out a template but challenged them to try to use a word template instead!

Overall I was happy with the first class and super excited to teach the lesson to a smaller group of students.  Due to the size of the previous class some of the group activities were hard to manage and due to time I wasn't able to do all of them.  The second class however, wasn't near as excited to see me as I was to see them!!  I came at them hard with the value of the lesson and why a resume benefits them... But it was no use they would not give me their attention.  They were all freshman and after the lesson Mr. Wallace and I discussed the class they were primarily IEP students.  He said that they are always that way and that they are his greatest challenge.  There were 5 of the ten students engaged and trying to participate.  I can say they push every one of my buttons and several times I had to yell just to get them to hear me instead of their neighbor.  After the group activity I put them back in different seats didn't help....  We did get through all the material but I never used my PowerPoint because I was afraid to take my eyes off them.

 

After a few days to reflect it was a learning experience and I have an entire list of things I would do if it were my class!  However, I can happily say that class will not be there in the spring its only a half year class!!!! Huge relief! Mr. Wallace told me afterward that he only had me teach that class to give me the experience of dealing with students like that.  He said he figured if I was exposed to them now I could make my list of ways to handle those behaviors for spring, check list made!!  Just to give you a clear picture of what they were acting like, when asked to draw their skills one students skill involved a magazine, bottle of lotion and Kleenex!!!  Seriously?!?!?

Micro-Teaching

Just have to start by saying; it was awesome!!  The last three days have ensured me that even though my degree will have taken my 8 years it was totally worth it!  I am definitely ready to spend everyday in front of students.  There is nothing better that watching their eyes light up with wonder and excitement!




This day started off great!  I had the students make name tags so I could actually call on them by name.  It is a great idea and I really enjoyed being able to interact with them on that level.  We worked our way into the interest approach which was on capillary action.  I had students use markers, coffee filters, water and Dixie cups to demonstrate how capillary action works.  In addition to the students activity I sent up celery in colored water to show how the leaves changed color.  Well to say the least that activity took WAY longer than I had anticipated! 
However, all is good I then moved into my power-point presentation.  We discussed how capillary action is used in soldering.  Then I asked what two principles capillary action requires; cohesion and adhesion.  This was something I could have done better,  I really didn't drive home what these two terms meant.
Finally, we proceeded to work through the steps and safety of soldering.  I had a worksheet for the students to fill in as we went.  This went really well and smooth, the finally activity I did to rap up was a review.  I had the students talk me through the process and captured those steps on the board.
Over-all it was a super awesome day and I was very pleased.  My take away message is time, I truly believe understanding time will only come with time and knowing your students!  I also need to learn to drive home the felt need of a lesson.


The sun kept on shining in my favor today!  Today was going to be my biggest test yet.  I started out the day with observations on the celery experiment, students documented that the leaves were beginning to turn red.  We then moved into my interest approach which was the soldering demonstration.  The students were glued and I overheard several saying oh that's so easy!  So being the kind soul I am they were the ones I choose to pick to have come up and demonstrate next... Well, they decided it wasn't sooo.. easy and that I must have used a trick to do it.  After completing the 3 step demonstration I picked partners and released them to work on the task.  Their task was to solder to joints; one using propane and the other using MAPP gas.  Well, time was once again not in my favor.  The students were not able to complete the activity, however I did get them back together before they the bell rang.  I was able to get the shop cleaned up and the students in their seats for a couple minutes.  I held the students for a couple moments after the bell to explain what I needed them to do before tomorrow.  Great day just need more time!!

Well and now the fun has to end..  My final day was good, however sad because I wasn't near ready to leave those kids!! There's that pesky time thing again!!  Today was to say the least disorganized!  I had 8 students that needed to finish up their soldering activities. I decided that the best thing to do was to give the 10 students who completed the activity an article to read.  The article drew conclusions between why propane and MAPP gas are utilized for soldering.  The students in the classroom did a great job of staying on task and reading the article.  The two groups in the shop worked through the exercise.  One group did a great job while the other chose to act stupid.  The student with the torch was heating the wrong end of the pipe just to see it change colors.  He didn't even try to put the solder on it.  I turned the torch off and sent everyone back into the classroom.  I tried to gather everyone's attention but it wasn't working well today.  Anyways, I moved into my rap up activity.  I questioned the students about the correlations between yesterday and today.  From there we did some reviewing and then I gave the quiz.  After the quiz I passed out the learner satisfaction form.  I had a few minutes left at the end and I tried to just have a conversation with the students about their experience and what they thought.  I had two things jump out me that I really liked: #1- You covered everything that was one the quiz, teachers always ask questions we didn't cover well,  This concept took me by surprise but I know from my past as well teachers do tend to ask hard questions just to see who was listening.  I think that goes to show my philosophy, which is that exams are a chance to show what you know not see what you don't know.  The second comment I liked was on my use of colored paper.  The students said they liked that because they could keep them all straight.  They liked how I would tell them to take out the "yellow" paper.  It made it easy to keep track, and from my side I liked being able to look around the room and know everyone had the right paper out.

It was a great experience and it truly helped me grow as an educator!! This experience reminded me how much I want to teach and why I want to teach AG!


Just for everyone's enjoyment the last remark I got from a student was.... "Can I get your phone number?"  I am so glad I have a good sense of humor.  I just laughed at him and said, "that's really funny!"  I mean seriously kid I'm ten years older than you!! :) 

Inquire into frustration???

Well I think that about sums it up..  I like the idea of inquiry based instruction however, in an attempt to create a solid scientific inquiry lab frustration occurred. 

My lab started with the question, "Which has more energy, corn or soybeans?"

I got mixed answers, one student insisted soybeans do.  I followed her insistance with why? and how do you know?  At that point she wasn't sure.

Then I passed out 5 different articles to my students, which were.
-How does a calorimeter work?
-How do they measure calories?
-How do food manufacturers calculate the calorie count of packaged foods?
-The energy content of horse feeds.
-Armsby Calorimeter

I asked the students to read their article, underline 2 themes, and circle 3 words.

When all pencils were down I had the students come to the board and capture their choices.

We then proceeded to make connections in the vocabulary words, and then drew conclusions about the themes.

I had the students each create a question and then work together to pick one question to answer.  After they picked their question, I had them for a hypothesis.  The final step was to have them create a procedure, this is where the frustration occurred.  The students had all the necessary supplies on the desk at the front of the room.  They also had all the information they needed in their articles.. IF THEY COLLABORATED!  The students were struggling with the procedure, finally one student said well who else read this article... That was the point she realized they all had different articles... She exclaimed "it tells how to test energy!" the ah ha moment!! 



This is about where my lab ended, the students were very frustrated.  However, I think the cloud was starting to clear because they were beginning to talk more about their articles.  This activity required the students to read and retain their articles.  They each had important pieces that they had to capture.  I received feedback about this being frustrating especially with high school students.  Although, I think frustration is somewhat normal with IBI?? 

I felt like the lab went pretty well overall however, I wonder if I should let them struggle or start giving them more information?

I had a couple people asking how this lab would be performed, so here are 2 links.
www.learner.org/workshops/chemistry/support/act6_d1.pdf
courses.chem.psu.edu/chem111/pdf/Experiments/Calorimetry%20Lab.pdf

Problem Solving

Well finally things seem to be looking up!

I came into today's lab with 2 objectives:
-Smile: be excited
-Answer and ask lots of questions

For once I really think that happened!

The lesson I presented today was an introduction to the final project in my animal science II class.  The project is to develop a farm business plan.  The students are going to be presented with the project at the beginning of the semester.  They will asked to choose the species they want to do their project on, and then I asked them to list "factors" they used to make their decision on a notecard.

I have definitely realized I hate "quite",  I really need to work on allowing students time to complete their bellwork.  I always want to jump into the lesson before I allow students sufficient time to complete the bellwork.

I gave myself a huge pep-talk before I walked out the door this morning! "I will be excited, I will be happy, I will smile!!"  Well overall I think it worked, my evaluations all stated that I had improved enthusiasm!  However, it was mentioned if it was genuine or forced... But heck, I will take it either way its an improvement!!

The second objective I made for myself was to ask more questions, in addition I wanted to make sure I was answering all questions.  I made sure to check for questions and answer all of them.  I can see that I still need to work on developing my questions.  I know what I want the students to say however, I think I need to phrase them differently.  Thus, my next objective is to work on scripting better questions!

Overall, I was happy with my performance today!  Finally a lab that made me say I think I am going to be ok and make it through this.  I really feel like I am making progress. 

Demonstration Lab

 "How to replace a float"





 For my demonstration lab, I choose to demonstrate how to replace a carburetor float.  My bellwork for this lab was to project a picture of a rusty log splitter sitting outside.  I ask students to identify one thing that stood out to them when they first looked at the picture and to identify two possible problems with this engine.

This is a lesson that I will be using in my advanced single-cylinder class.  I transitioned from my bellwork into my interest approach.  My interest approach was to read off a scenario, from a customer regarding their engine.  The students were given a job sheet with the scenario typed into it.  I used the job sheet for the small gasoline engines CDE.  The students were then given a brief period to develop a thought regarding what was wrong with the engine.

I spent a lot of time preparing and practicing this lab.  I was very happy with that I didn't forgot any parts of my lesson.  However I did fail to advance my slides to display my objectives prior to giving the demonstration.

I seem to be lacking enthusiasm and energy during my teaching.  I am really struggling with this is lab, the only reason I can come up with is that I am being recorded.  I was really worried that I had an issue until fall leadership.  At fall leadership conference, I felt like a different person I was excited and happy.  I would love some input on how to pep-up my labs!!  I want to be a dynamic educator and I want students to be excited about my class.

I really felt confident going into this lab.  I realize that I shut down a lot of students questions.  I found myself afraid to start answering questions due to time.  I was nervous I was going to run out of time if I started down that path.