Student Teaching Week 2

2 Weeks Under My Belt...I Must Be an Expert Right?

Today marks the ending of my second week at Penns Manor High School.  What an interesting week it has been.  Full of surprises and unexpected schedule changes, I surely was challenged in my ability to be an excellent teacher.  But I'm a survivor!

This Week's Happenings

Actually this week has been really exciting.  With two awesome labs in my animal & veterinary science class, one tasting off-flavors of milk, and one dissecting a cow's udder, and beginning my unit on international agriculture,  I can't complain.  I will be honest, I have never dissected an udder nor seen the inside of one, so I was terrified I wouldn't be able to identify the parts we had talked about.

But it all worked out.

 

This week, I introduced my freshman students in Introduction to Agricultural Careers & Leadership to my classroom expectations, procedures, and consequences and started off the class with the International Agriculture unit.  I'm pretty stoked for the class. Some students are already excited to learn, specifically about equipment used in other parts of the world.

Students in the Power Technologies class are almost done tearing down their engines

                 

 

while students in the Power Systems Class are just starting the electrical wiring boards.

                        

Teaching Reflections

We all love hands-on labs!!  They are so much fun!! It was so awesome to see my frustrating students get so involved and asking me questions about the very same topics we covered in class.  Of course, I knew this would happen, but still, it's so cool to witness.  However, sometimes you gotta work through the classroom portion first so the lab actually makes sense.  

I think next time I have a lab similar to the dissection, I'm going to try making it a little more inquiry like.  I can't believe I didn't think of this before.  Granted, the udder was still frozen and I wouldn't have been able to anyways.  I think, it may be neat to have the students dissect the udder first, identify different structures in it, draw it on a diagram, then look into identifying each of the structures and their functions.  Once we've learned what all the structures are, go back to the udder and put all the pieces together.  With this weather, we can keep an udder from going bad for quite a while and serves as the perfect opportunity!!

What's in it for next week?

She sure is gonna be a busy week.  I'll have four classes that I will be teaching next week.

In Animal & Veterinary Science, students are going to:

~ Finish dissecting the udder

~ Begin learning about processing butter

~ History of butter

~ And will make their own butter to eat!!

In Introduction to Agricultural Careers & Leadership, students will be:

~ Learning about the agricultural regions of the world

~ Begin their bulletin board projects on regions of the world

~ Learn about issues in global agriculture.

In Power Technologies, Students will continue to tear down and begin rebuilding their engines.

In the Power Systems class, all of the students will continue to work on their electrical wiring projects for me to inspect and grade.

I'm pretty excited for whats to come!!  Look out for my next blog!