A Little Spark; A Lot of Growth: Week #13

The sad truth is that student teaching is coming to an end. While I will certainly be relieved to have a break from the chaos of teaching classes, writing lesson plans, completing assignments and so forth, it is going to be absolutely difficult to leave. 

I dropped my first course this week and it was really tough to not be the one teaching those lessons anymore. It was hard to hand over not only my students but everything that I had set up with my classroom procedures and system. It's like running really fast and then someone telling you to stop. There is no way you can stop in an instant; you have to slow down first and then come to a complete stop. Well, handing over my class was more like coming to a stop without the slowing down part. 

In my other classes, I am working to start wrapping things up. At this point, students are working on some projects or I am finishing up some of my units. I am hopeful to finish most of them by the end of next week, but I believe I will still have some into my final week. It is all going so fast!

A Little Spark

Throughout the semester I had been pretty hard on myself because of my weaknesses in certain content areas in multiple classes and that has been a challenge for me to overcome mentally. Because of this, I think it affected my confidence when teaching. However, when I started the parliamentary procedure unit, I felt a surge of confidence. 

It's funny because before, I was a little reluctant to teach parliamentary procedure for the sole reason of feeling like I wasn't strong in the information. But somehow, somewhere something clicked. I realized that I knew a lot more than I gave myself credit for, and of course, my students did not have any knowledge of the topic so I certainly knew something they didn't. Therefore I had something to share. So when I started the unit, I felt more energized and certainly more confident. It showed me that there is a lot of growth to be made, but that I know I can teach and I know I am energized and excited to teach and that I can do it. I know I have the potential, I just need to keep pushing and tap into it. 

Project Time

I have enjoyed giving students hands-on activities to do. Whether it was little things like making a 3-D representation of cultural methods of growing crops or working on welding projects, I like letting them take the stage. It takes the pressure off of me, and gives them a challenge. 

A diagram of crop rotation

The hardest part about projects is the differences in motivation and speed at which students complete projects. Certain students constantly finish early (too early) but can still prove that they answered the questions or they completed the task. Others take too much time. This can obviously create problems on both ends. After our video chat on differentiation, I have tried giving students additional tasks to complete when they finish. I still find this a little challenging depending on what the activity is that they were doing initially, but I hope at some point (even though it might not be during my last weeks of class) that I can implement some of the strategies for differentiation and keeping students on task. 

Plans for Next Week

Next week, I have my plant science students presenting their mini lessons they are making to teach about their crops. In small engines, I am assessing students on the engine systems and then I am handing that class back over. In agriscience, students are continuing to work on parli pro and will finish learning the motions and get some demonstrations completed for their assessment. In welding, students are continuing to work on welding projects. In food science, we will most likely finish the food safety unit (otherwise it will go into the next week). And in leadership, students will finish the unit on beliefs by writing an essay. 

Leaving Thought

"Keep calm and consider it a teachable moment"