My Ag Ed Journey

This past week I noticed another issue that I have been facing in regard to my student teaching and planning experience. This issue is time management, both in the classroom and of my own time. I will have time planned to accomplish whatever it is that I need to get done but my execution of that plan does not run smoothly. One suggestion that was made to help with this that I plan to implement is to put myself on a timer or some kind, both in class and at home. This way I will have all of my set aside time to work and will not be overstressed because I did not accomplish my goals for the day. The main issue related to time management I have had is balancing my school life and my home life. I want to get everything for student teaching accomplished but I also want to spend time with my family, because I don't get to see them very often. However, my planning is suffering because of this so I need to find better ways to balance the two. I feel that using a timer of some kind wi...

These past two weeks especially I have been struggling in regards to my planning. I have been struggling to make sure I put enough time into my planning to make my lessons work well. This weekend I was able to dedicate more time to planning my lessons and I think I may have some good ones. I have noticed that one of my main issues, beyond time management, was trying to create everything. I have been provided with many resources to use during my lesson planning as well as given advice on where to look for information. Despite this, I have kept trying to remake everything. This is very time consuming and makes it harder to create all the lessons that I would need to have for each week. I am working to make better use of my resources but I still struggle with finding what I need. I know my cooperating teacher is more than willing to help me and I know that my student teaching is a learning experience, but I am still struggling with asking for help when I need it. I am trying to improve...

This week I had my first experience with an SAE visit to Goodenough Farms. Abby Goodenough was happy to show me around her SAE to get a look at what she is doing and how she has progressed in her SAE. Abby is the President of the Northern Burlington High School FFA, she is also the 2019 Farm Fair Queen and the 2020 AGriculture Fair Ambassador. Abby is a senior who plans to attend college in the fall. Abby's SAE takes place on her family's farm, which is roughly 300 acres. Their house and the barn are relatively close together with pasture being across the driveway from the house. Goodenough Farms also has many tractor-trailers available for when they need to ship items to different locations. Abby's SAE project is raising beef cattle. It started about three years ago with a cow named Eleanor, whom she still has. Abby currently owns three cows related to her SAE of the seven cattle that her family owns. The cattle that she raises are Bl...

During this week of student teaching, two things stood out to me the most. The first is something that I feel I would need to work on myself. This is my relatively poor planning and time management skills. I know that I could deliver better lessons if I allowed myself enough time to effectively work on and review my lessons before I present them. I believe that I am still working on getting into the teacher mindset that I am developing within myself. The second thing that I have noticed is that I seem to struggle more with teaching about tasks that come easily to me. An example of this is that I am struggling with teaching my students how to properly read a ruler. I believe that this is in part due to being able to easily read the ruler and give the measurements that it shows. As this task isn't something I have struggled with I am struggling to teach my students how to do this. I am also having trouble helping some of my students to understand the concept of simplifying their ...

This week I taught the seventh-grade class a three-day mini-unit on wildlife. I tried to find a fun way to teach them about the wildlife around them. Prior to providing this mini-unit, I had gotten permission from my cooperating teacher to ask them to vote on what environmental sciences topic they wanted to learn about. They chose the wildlife which was a topic that I was looking forward to teaching students about. I know that this was a risk but I thought that the students would enjoy having some autonomy in their environmental sciences class. While the students seemed to enjoy the lessons and activities I had for them I think I could have structured them better. My first problem was that I was inconsistent with how the information was presented during the lessons. During one lesson I had each student read about one of the animals. In another, I tried to start out this way but the students didn't seem interested in reading so I dropped that tactic and had them read what they t...