Week 5: A Week of Firsts!

This week may have been my fifth week of student teaching, but it was full of many firsts. My first parent conference, my first week of a full load of classes, my first SAE visit and even my first 2 hour delay! I was starting to think that didn’t believe in delays here in Crawford County even with the incredible amounts of snow we have gotten but we started out this week with one! 

I will admit it was nice to sleep in a little but the delay was also frustrating because I didn’t get to see some of my classes that day. Therefore all three of my Ag 1 classes ended up in different spots. On top of the delay, we had activity period this week which meant that one class of Ag 1 students got even more behind! This was just another example of how we need to be flexible in the classroom!

One of my other firsts for the week was having a parent conference after school. It was a great learning experience to see how these meeting can go! It was interesting to see many different teachers, the principal, the student and their parent come together to discuss what they can do to help the student succeed. It taught me how important parent communication can be for the teacher, the student and even the administration of the school.

On Wednesday night I also had the opportunity to do two different SAE visits. One student had a placement SAE at a local dairy farm and the other was raising sows and had some adorable piglets for us to check out too! I loved getting the chance to see the hard work the students were putting in outside of school. It also was great to see other parents and members of the local community. 

On top of all the awesome things I got to do this week, I also picked up the Ag Science classes which means this was my first week of teaching a full load. While it was exhausting, it was exciting to get the chance to work with every class throughout the day. 

The Ag 2 and Ag 3/4 classes began learning about Arc Welding safety, the Ag 1 students continued to work on their woodshop projects and learn about FFA history and the Ag Science students began a unit on plants! Throughout the week the different classes had the chance to plant in the greenhouse, try to weld ice cubes together and create different welding joints using graham crackers and icing! 

The classes on went pretty well but I have noticed that I need to work on getting the students to be more enthusiastic on the projects and lessons we are doing. I am going to try to relate the lessons to things in their lives or even talk about how the information can be beneficial to their future!

Overall, my student teaching experience at CASH is going great! Next week is going to be full of more fun projects, new experiences and I’ll get to be reunited with my Penn State student teacher family! I can’t wait!

“Don’t wait for the perfect moment, take the moment and make it perfect!”