Teaching Bluejays: Ah Ha Moments (Week 6)

This week had a little bit of everything, as far as the life of an ag teacher goes. I got to experience the changing of one unit to the other for the first time, attended my first school board meeting as a teacher, and got to play the roll of the second teacher in a two teacher program. The struggles of teaching started to shine through for me, but at the end of the day I was still rewarded with those "ah-ha!" moments that make it all worth it.

Agronomy team presenting to the school board

Monday night, I attended the Central Columbia school board February meeting along with Mr Brown, Mr Turner, two chapter officers, and our state 2nd place agronomy team. I learned that February is the meeting that the chapter presents at each year, a choice Mr Brown made because of National FFA week, and it is the meeting where the budget report is presented. Through a series of events, they had their typical thank you/FFA week/etc presentation, AND the agronomy team got to present on their trip to Big E. We got to show off student success, justify days out of school by showing how those days connect to class content, and provide an example of how we use technology (ipads) in class. I'm glad I got to learn school board meeting strategy while student teaching.

2 Student Teachers, 1 Workshop
We got Mackenzie Appleman (Doug's last student teacher
before me) to participate, trying on PPE 

On Wednesday I got to very my instruction by teaching to an adult audience. Mr Brown and I took the morning and traveled to the Columbia County Ag Conference to present pesticide safety to the members of the ag community (mostly farmers). Our materials ironically came from Kelly Lowery at PSU Pesticide Ed, who presented to us at the pre-internship seminar. I learned that with an adult audience you might not get enthusiastic participation, but the individuals will still give you the respect you need to teach. Teaching with high energy may not be as naturally accepted as it is with high schoolers, but you still need to capture and hold interest. Doug and I were some of the only presenters who used audience participation to demonstrate our objectives (pesticide spill cleanup and biomagnification) and we ended up being named the highest rated workshops of the conference! Not bad for the morning! After that, we returned to teach 7th and 8th period.

Thursday and Friday became a true test for me. Mr Turner took his personal days, leaving me as (unofficially) the second teacher. I will say that there were no major mishaps, and business was able to continue as normal. With that being said, on Thursday, I experienced one of my biggest "roller coaster" days thus far.

My first period prep went as normal and I felt prepared to attack the day. My plumbing ID activity flopped second period, mostly my fault. Period three started with no one remembering if group 1 or 2 was with me or Mr Brown. the massive push-back and lack of cooperation caused my nerves to fry, further compounded by the fact that the bellwork activity I prepared included content that this group had not reached yet. (Again, my fault) For Mr Brown and I's prep 4th period, he and I worked together to diagnose issues and repair my sanity. I said that I also wasn't 100% confident on the plant science content for 5th and 8th period, so we went over that. During that time I made a connection in my head and had a light bulb moment, which turned into me changing the lesson around a new interest approach over lunch.

Long story short: we watched a video of a space shuttle launch and then went along with business as normal. At the end of the lesson, I brought things full circle and compered the rocket boosters to cotyledons, and fuel tank to endosperm. It worked beautifully. It was the best I have ever "set the hook" on a lesson. Mr Brown was observing and told me about student reactions I did not notice. One student, who is in AP Bio, exclaimed "wow this all total makes sense now!" and another "hard sell" student thought "wow this is so cool". After the bell rang Mr Brown forced me to stop and enjoy what had just happened. It was a true come-from-behind redemption moment for me; one that I will remember for a long time.

So in conclusion, this week I got too see school board, adult audience instruction, and I was reminded that in teaching you have the opportunity to start again each class of the day. Ill end with some words of wisdom. Mr Brown passed them on to me just as they were told to him when he was in my shoes: In teaching there is a lot of planning and politics that go in to the job, but the best moments you will ever have are when you get to forget all of that, shut the door, and teach students for 46 minutes.