Teaching Bluejays: The Gangs All Here! (Week 5)

Week five seemed to come and go in a matter of moments. This is probably due to the fact that I only had 2 days of instruction in the classroom. Monday I had the opportunity to spend the day visiting a program with a vacancy that I applied for. The time line of that visit works out well considering Friday was our cohort's "Job Prep Boot Camp" seminar in State College. Add in a snow day on Thursday, and I feel like I had more windshield time (what I call driving) than class time. It has been almost 600 miles now that I'm back in Bloomsburg on Sunday night, but I don't mind. I love my windshield time!

During my two days in school, my highlight was starting plant science with the Ag 1 classes. I feel like the upcoming unit will provide many opportunities to be creative and grab student's interest. I am also starting plumbing with Ag 3, and am working through fasteners with Ag 2. I am also looking forward to helping team teach NOCTI test prep with Ag 4, and I have already set up some cool inquiry experiments for them.

At our seminar, I was reminded how thankful I am to have my 6 cohort members in my life. They are some of my people, and I could talk to any one of them for hours and it would seem like minutes. As we talked and reflected about our experiences so far, I wrote down some thoughts I want to carry with me through my remaining weeks. In conclusion of this post, here they are in a more expanded form:

• Get extrinsic motivation, from individuals I don't see on a daily basis, to be creative and expand my instruction with new ideas and creative activities
• Each day, try to communicate with each individual student. 
• Each day, have students write something, say something, and get them out of their seats to do something
• Catch students doing something right, not just doing something wrong
• I realized how much I like the "knucklehead" students. They keep things interesting, and it is the most rewarding when I see them engaged and interested in learning
• Engagement is a concept to work towards, not a step that is achieved