Teaching Blue Jays: Old and New Beginnings (Week 3)

I would call this week one of old and new beginnings.

First of all, I picked up Ag II this week with their unit of Fasteners. We are splitting the class in half. I will instruct half the class (9 students) for 2 days, followed by the other half the next 2 days. When they are not with me, they will be finishing their sheet metal/soldering/riveting unit with Mr Brown.

The second day of the first group was observed by Dr Foster, who made his first of four visits on Wednesday.  It is one of my student teaching goals to make everything purposeful, and I received some wonderful feedback on that goal. The piece that stands out the most was to create a sense of urgency in group work. I introduced Fasteners by having them categorize examples of fasteners. It will work better for me to set a time limit, then introduce the next plot twist or idea and set a new time limit. I have the first two days of the second group this week, and I am looking forward to making some changes and seeing how it works! Next week, I will continue with the fasteners unit and help Ag I start their record keeping journey in The AET.

Another highlight of the week was taking students to Tunkhannock HS for the area mechanics, small gas engines, and ag sales CDEs. I got my first taste of CDE competitions and got to meet teachers from across northeast PA. I also had a proud teacher moment with a student in the plumbing part of the mech competition. Earlier in the week I stayed after school to help a student solder (sweat a joint) for the first time. She was familiar with what to do, but it was her first time doing it herself. Well, on Friday she was the only student to get a perfect score on that part of the competition!

At this point in the blog, I started to discuss my weekend at 4-H State Leadership Conference. What resulted was a deep reflection on my history in youth development teaching philosophy, so I thought it would come across best in a stand-alone blog. Watch for that in the near future. I am excited to take the successes of week three in to week 4!