Its getting REAL

This week was a crazy week. I picked up two classes this week taking my total to 3 of the 4. All is going well besides trying to get students to take notes and pay attention.

Veterinary Science 

         This class should be the easiest, so I thought. I mean, I have a degree as a veterinary technician and have worked in the field for 4 years. However, teaching the information so that the students understand it is hard. I started off by teaching about directional terms and planes. This by far is my worst area of understanding. I think it is for the fact that we do not use this terminology in the vet field very much. My first lesson was a flop. I gave the students the definitions and then had them fill in a drawing. None of them understood it. So how do I fix that?  After getting back to my apartment, I vented to my roommate and we bounced ideas off of each other. While at Wal-Mart that night, he came up with a great idea (really, he took my idea and made it better). I bought a giant stuffed bear, sewing pins and some ribbon. The next day in class, I retaught the information and had some extra worksheets that the students filled out. Then I started them on a gummy bear dissection lab. While they were dissecting the gummy bears, I took the giant bear around and had them pin the labels for the terms right on the bear so that they were able to see it in a more real life situation. I already took the ribbon and tied it around the bear for the planes, the students had to label the planes and then the other body terms. At the end of the lab, I asked the students if the way that I presented the information was better and if they understood it. To my surprise I got all yes's.



     At the beginning of class, for my bellwork, I give the students 3-4 prefixes commonly used in veterinary clinics. Since I had some time remaining in the class on Wednesday, I came up with an idea. I remember when I was in school trying to learn all of this terminology, my roommates and I would come up with fun and weird ways to remember what the words meant. So why not have the students do the same thing?  I asked the students to think of a game or way to remember the prefixes and write it down. I was surprised with the ideas they came up with. For example, I have a group making a memory game, a jeopardy game and one group even took the spoons game and made it fit for this. I am planning on using these games as reviews on Tuesday's and Thursday's for a break between sections.

      One thing in this class that made me say "WOW this is getting real" is when Mrs. Fry came to me and said that I really taught a student something. One of the prefixes that I went over that day was DE which means without, lack of. This students was finally able to understand what de-caf meant on coffee cans.

Ag Leadership

      Last week I was able to be part of the Selinsgrove FFA meeting and wow things are crazy there. The officers were not organized and the members did not act appropriately. This week in ag leadership, Mrs. Fry and I are teaching the students about Parliamentary procedure. So we started off talking about why parli pro is used and the values of it. One of the activities in the book that we are using has the students brainstorm ways that they could make meetings better. My ag leadership class consist of all the officers so why not use this to our advantage. The students were able to talk about why their meetings do not go like they should. The next day I took the ideas that they came up with and we spent the first half of the class talking about how to fix things. We came up with the officers meeting the day of or the day before the meeting to get final details, the officers are going to spread through-out the room in order to create some order in the room, and the secretary is also going to provide a sheet with dates of events along with how many points said events are worth. If all goes well, I do believe that this will make the meetings better along with getting better participation in FFA events.

Ag Foundations

    What can I say about this class. One section is great, the other I am ready to scream (even no I do not want to be the teacher that screams at her students). I covered brazing safety and set-up this week. With my notes sheet, the students had to write more than normal only because I thought this was very important information that dealt with very deadly equipment. I had one student complain about having to write so much. My reply was that if I just gave them the notes and did not have them write anything then they would not learn it due to not even looking at the packet. After he tried to tell me that I was wrong, Mrs. Fry spoke up and said that I was right (feels good to have the back up from my corp. teacher). I do believe that I possible scared the crap out of some of the students this week, but I feel that it is needed in order to ensure safety in the shop.

    After students were done taking notes, I took them to the shop to show them how to light the torch. It is bad enough having my corp teacher there watching but having the students in the other ag class that are taking welding 2 is even more nerve wracking. When we first got in the shop they all stopped working and came over to watch me demonstrate. After having to tell them 3 times to go back to work and stop watching me they finally left. Today, however, I was fine with them watching. I even had one right behind me helping me along.


This week has been a great week overall. I can not wait to pick up my last class sometime next week. However, I am scared to teach that class as well. I am starting by teaching 3-4 weeks of electricity and I am really bad at this stuff. I was able to sit down with Mrs. Fry today and have her explain some things to me and give me the 5 rules that she follows that made things make more sense to me.

I will keep you posted on how this goes. Until next time....................

Week 1 is under my belt

Monday

                Can I just say how irritated I was that we had school and no one else did. It was quite depressing that I was receiving snap chats from my cohort about in-service days and tomorrow being their first day. I started off right away. I have 4 class on the odd days and 3 class on even days.

                Building Construction class is going to be tough. I have a total of seven students who do not look like the type of students who would pick a class to do building in.

                Veterinary science class is going to be fun. I have about 15 students in my class. Students show up to class but have lunch first. While standing in the classroom going over resources, a life skills teacher aid came in and asked where he should sit. I explained that we had lunch first, so he left. I then relayed the information to my corp teacher, stating that we have life skills students in our class. We were both kind of worried about how that was going to work. Veterinary Science classes are very science based and is not really easy to teach to students will special needs. When class finally did start, the life skills student (joe) was late to class. His aid sat in the back of the room while Joe sat up front. To me this makes no sense. An aid is there to help the student take notes and be part of the class. How is that to happen if you sit on the complete opposite ends of the class? However, Joe did very well in class, he even answered most questions.

                Ag Foundations, what is there to say. I had to chance to observe these students plenty of times before. I came into this class with the mindset that by the end of the day I may want to quit teaching. I have two sections of this class, all freshman. This is the class that I started off teaching right away. To top that off, I have to teach welding. I know from prior experience that I may not be the best welder but I know how to teach it.

                I was sure that I had enough content to last for 90 minutes when I started the day, however, during prep, I showed my corp teacher what I had and was told that is not enough. This is going to be the hardest thing for me this semester. I was able to gather enough resources by the time class started. We started off by going over my expectations and general safety rules. I then sent the students into the shop to do a scavenger hunt of safety equipment. After the hunt, students returned to the classroom to take a practice safety test. I then started to lecture on basic welding safety and types of welding.

                Like stated before, I knew that this would be a tough class. All but 4 students were not paying attention. It took me 30 minutes to get over 10 slides of information. I was always making sure that they were coping the notes. It got to the point where the three girls in the front of the class were complaining about how long it was taking and telling me to just tell the rest of the class to “shut up”. At this time there was 30 minutes of the class left. I decided to stop teaching and give them time to work on their speeches. Once again, I had a fight on my hands. Some students tried to tell me that they were done or that they are working on their speech at home. I gave them the benefit of the doubt and told them to work on updating AET. However, has time went on the done students started to ask me questions about topics, which just proved to me that they were not done and have not even started working on it yet.

                I have got my hands full with my freshman class this semester, but after observing the other classes, I have a feeling that I am going to be fine with them.

Tuesday

                Today I get to play sub. I was given instructions on what each class is to do. After reading the instructions, I felt this is stupid. I can teach the students the information needed so that they do not fall behind but instead I have to assign them book work.

                Overall today was very boring. The one class that I was able to have some fun in was my Ag Leadership class which consists of mostly the officer team. We got all the records books ready to go for the contest that was to be tonight, however, because of the snow it got postponed to Thursday after school.

                We had an early dismissal today. Sorry there is not more to report.

Wednesday

                Starting off with a 2 hour delay made things a little bit easier. Once again I observed the building construction and veterinary science. I once again taught Ag foundations welding. On problem though is that I am going to be 2 days ahead in this section due to not having the other section yesterday. In order to not get to far ahead I thought of the cheese and crackers idea.

                I started the class off by having students write the bellwork and objectives on the boards. I also passed out a paper for students to write the bellwork/question of the day on along with the ticket out. It took some time to explain how to use this sheet. As the students were doing the bellwork, a few of them asked me what PPE is. Trying to control my frustration, I asked them where their notes are at from Monday? I had to repeat the fact that we went over this stuff on Monday about 5 times.

                After the bellwork was taken care off, I finished the powerpoint with different weld joints and some other terminology. Once again I was getting pretty frustrated with the students. It got to one point where I told the kids that if the talking did not stop I would do a seat change. That got them to be quiet for a couple of minutes then they started to talk again. Once I was finished with the powerpoint, I had the students line up according to birthday’s then count off.

                Once in groups, I used an interest approach that Billy did in lab. We used cheese and crackers for the students to learn how to make a bead and then how to make certain joints. They students had 25 minutes to do this. It went over a lot better than I thought it would. All students were able to make all the joints. At the end of class, I had them make a 2 inch bead using both the half moon and circle method. The beads then were compared to each other and my corp teacher judged them. I also had her go over why she picked the ones she did.

                Overall, my day was not bad. I just have to learn how to deal with my freshman class.

Thursday

                Started off the day on time. The morning was pretty quiet. I did have my Ag Leadership class today. We worked on speeches and getting things ready for the open gym night we are hosting tomorrow night.

                Today I have the second section of freshman for ag foundations. This class, from observation time, is worse than the first section is. I had a plan to go into this class giving the students new seats right off the bat instead of waiting to see how they will act. Once the new seats were given, after some fighting, I was able to keep the attention of the students. I had a shorter period today of only 50 minutes and had to put two lessons together so that I did not fall to far behind with them. I feel that I rushed through some of the lecture stuff but was able to cover everything in a good way.

                I once again did the cheese lab. This section did not behave as good as the other group. I had one student who instead of making joints just put a crap ton of cheese on the cracker. I ended up having to take the cheese from her. I ran out of time to do a lesson review with this class but I will learn from my mistakes.

Friday

                For my ag foundations class today, I gave them new seats. Not the best response from the students but it will work out. After giving the new seats I had the students update their AET projects and then I gave them a safety quiz. This was not what I thought it would be. The students made the questions harder than they needed to be. I told the students they could miss 2 questions and still be able to go in the shop. I had 10 of the 15 pass it. After giving the test, students then were introduced to the brazing project that they will have to do for a grade in this class. I showed them pictures then gave them the requirements. I then explained that since I only have four welding stations that I will take 3-4 students at time in the shop and the rest will have to research what project they want to make and come up with a bill of materials.

                The students that I had in the shop with me were a mixture of kids that were excited and ones that were scared to death. I stared off by showing the students how to set up the machines and then showing how to strike an arch and how to make a bead. I then had them each set up their machine. I started one student at a time and helped them make an arc and bead. I started by having the students cover, and I started the arc for them. Once I had the arc done, I let go of the electrode holder and just stood there and watched while keeping my hands close. All students were able to make a pretty good bead.

                After class left out, I was able to attend/supervise an FFA meeting. This was weird at first, but after watching the meeting it has showed me that I have a lot to teach my officer team about Parliamentary Procedure.

                Tonight is the first FFA activity that I get to attend. Tonight is open gym night.  Hope everything goes well.

                Overall this week was great, I cant wait for next.