Hay Bales and Teacher Tales

For my final virtual mentor exploration, I had the opportunity to ask Mrs. Rachel Sauvola about some of  her teaching techniques and thoughts. Learning about her teaching style was very interesting and fun to me and I hope I can work to be a wonderful teacher and person like she is some day. The first question I asked her was about her teaching philosophy. Her words were very inspiring to me. She said, "Every student can find success in agricultural education." She stated that the community is her classroom. She wants every student to have opportunities and she can achieve this for her students through creating partnerships within her community. The second question I asked was, what strategies or resources do you use to help the class and program be responsive to cultural diversity? Mrs. Sauvola said her classroom is based off of respect and mutual expectations. She asks her students what they expect from her and she tells them what she expects from them and this creates a ...

For my ag mechanics demonstration I used the miter saw. This demonstration was surprisingly very fun to do! I did this demonstration in the top of my dad's barn. This is not the the perfect ideal "shop" setting but as ag teachers, we are taught variability and flexibility to work with anything! My demonstration was just a short part of my what my whole lesson would consist of. Shop safety would have a whole day and lesson dedicated to it in the very beginning of the class as it is very important for students to be safe when using machines. The demo consisted of me showing the class how to use the machine. In an actual class, I would of showed them this multiple times. One thing I would change is slowing it down in my video. I had steps for the students to follow but I probably went through them to quickly. This is a tool that is simple enough that younger students could use but you would want to ensure they knew how to safely. After the demonstration, I would have each st...

This week in lab we had a "special" lab. We were instructed to make substitute worthy lesson plans. After completing the making of our lesson, we were to teach them in our lab. The special part was that we were asked to switch lesson plans and teach off one of our peers lesson plans. This lab was actually quite exciting and fun! At first I really was quite nervous. For the person teaching off of my lesson plan as well as the one I had to teach off of. After completing this lab, I realized there was no reason to be nervous. It was entertaining to watch my classmates each take their own teaching style and incorporate it into a different plan of teaching. It was also really fun for me to be able to do as well. I know after watching my lesson plan be done by someone else that it could easily be done in many different ways. When it was taught by my peer in class it definitely was not done how I would of done it but she still taught it very well and in a way that as successful to...

Differentiated learning is a framework for effective teaching. This method of teaching involves providing students with a variety of learning techniques to best fit their needs. This is an important teaching aspect because each student is unique and they bring their own uniqueness into the classroom. Some students may easily learn through lecture where others may not be able to grasp the concepts this way. They may need a method of hands on learning. Some students may excel at taking notes whereas others may need them printed or more time to take them. In classrooms, we need to thrive to meet the needs of all students. I love agriculture education for this reason. In my future classroom, there are so many ways to teach topics differently and fit them to my lessons. This will not only keep the classroom fun and always changing but also will benefit students learning needs. There are many ways to utilize individualized teaching techniques. I learned from our rea...

For my second virtual mentor exploration, I had the opportunity to chat with Ms. Sarabeth Royer. Sarabeth is in her third year of teaching at Athens high school. She teaches biology, veterinary science and introduction to agriculture. We had an awesome face to face discussion and talked about the advice she had for me on teaching! The first question I asked her for our interview was, what is your teaching philosophy and/ or core values as an agriculture educator? She stated that she firmly believes that learning does not just happen between four walls. That learning involves the students finding their passions and they actually learn the material instead of memorizing when they can make connections with the information. One of my favorite ideas she spoke to me was that if it doesn't challenge them it doesn't change them. I think this is so important to understand and may be hard for teenagers to grasp at the time. Once they realize it though, I am sure they would be very grate...

There are many benefits of assessing. These are benefits for both the student and the teacher. There is also multiple ways to assess. Assessment is mainly done to see what the students have learned. This helps the teacher see what they taught effectively, where their students are at and possibly what they need to reteach. For students, this could demonstrate what they need to focus on studying or what they should ask their teach to clarify. Through assessment, you can also see if certain teaching strategies were effective or not. For example, if an entire class did terrible on an exam the teacher can assume they did not teach the lesson appropriately and should probably go back and teach the information in a different way. If the class as a whole did well, and there was just a few outlier students, the teacher could assume their lesson was effective and some students possibly just were not focusing or having an off day on test day. Testing can be done in a variety of ways...

This week was a super fun one in lab! We covered problem solving with our "students". For me, this lab was certainly a challenge but it was also very exciting and interesting to complete. In my lab, we used a role playing activity. Our problem was the secretary of an organization asked them to pick their top three recommendations for helping to increase the food supply or our growing environment  from a list they provided. In the activity we made a pro and cons list of each and then came together to pick which methods we recommend to the organization. This was used to summarize and wrap up a plant science unit. Overall, I thought this activity went very well and was actually quite fun. We completed this activity as a whole group but it could also of been done as individuals or in small groups. I liked doing it as a class but I also really liked that I had them do some individual thinking at the end as well. From the list we were working from, I believe it could defin...