Hay Bales and Teacher Tales

This week was full of trying to learn to balance crazy schedules and leaving sub plans for the first time! Wellsboro goes crazy homecoming week! During the day, they do many activities in the afternoons like powder puff football, game shows, and pep rallies. This week we also had an act 80 day, giving us three days with half day or shortened schedules! It is fantastic that they make this such a big deal and something fun for the students. After school this week, they had a bonfire and a carnival for the public and then of course the parade before the football game. We not only had all this going on in school but we also had our first FFA competition! We traveled to Westfield with 36 students who competed in soils, forestry and wildlife against students from four other schools in our area. It was super exciting to see the students putting the knowledge that we just gave them in the classroom to real use! Many of them kept saying they had no idea what they were doing and were confused...

What a learning week!  This week, I had my first lesson go terribly wrong! HA! When I mean this went bad, it blew up. Total Catastrophe. So, this lesson happened with my introduction to agriculture class (poor ag newbies). I was attempting to teach an introduction to tree measurement. The main focus was on diameter using a tape and a Biltmore stick. I wanted to focus on making sure each student understood what they were doing individually but as I learned this left to much free time for the other students who were not practicing with me at the moment. After a discussion after class, I changed my lesson for the afternoon to be small group activities where they can practice and I could work with each small group as well. This went much better the second time! During Mr. Seamon's visit, the first time I taught it went well but he did provide me with a few tips that I used the second time I taught the lesson in the afternoon and these tips also made the lesson better! Learning exp...

Friday was definitely the day that stood out the most last week! As Mrs. B was away for an FFA event, I was in substitute and student teaching mode! This was definitely an experience to remember!  This was my first time in a role as a substitute teacher. This definitely gave me a whole new perspective. First, it makes me want to go back and apologize to every substitute that I ever had in high school! Mostly though, it demonstrated how hard this role actually is. Luckily for me, I understood what the classes were doing and was there when there assignments were initially assigned and explained to them. This was still difficult in some ways as I knew that the way I did things or the things I told them may not be exactly how Mrs. B would have done it. I cannot imagine being someone with little agriculture experience having to substitute in an agriculture classroom! This surely would be even more difficult.  Friday was also my first time ever teaching all periods during t...

This week was definitely noticeable that the students were starting to exit out of the honey moon stage of back to school excitement. They started to feel more comfortable in their classrooms which means they could start testing boundaries! Oh what fun! This week I observed many classroom management strategies from Mrs. B and Mrs. W. In my small engines class, it is a small group of boys at a variety of ages with vary mixed personality types. They had two class periods to fill out their worksheets. When Mrs. W checked them for completion many of them did not have it done and thought because they deserved more time or that she shouldn't grade them because "it was a shop class". I loved that Mrs. W did not accept any of their excuses and continued to grade them and explain the lesson and that they were still expected to complete it and participate in discussion as we went over it. Especially in shop classes that some could look at as more laid back it is super important to...