My Ag Ed Journey

Prior to the pandemic outbreak, I was working on and improving my scheduling skills so that I was better able to complete the tasks that I needed to complete each week. Originally, I had thought that the largest distraction would be the cats that I am currently living with. They come and go from my room as they please and occasionally pick fights amongst themselves. However, for the most part, I barely notice them which makes sense. Aside from the times that they are physically walking on me or making noise its almost like they aren’t even there. I have however noticed that I was largely underestimating how distracting my younger cousins would be. Again, more than half the time I don’t notice them but much more often than with the cats, they make it hard to do work. While I knew they would be a distraction from previous weekends, I did not take into account the fact that they will also be home all day every day of the week. Add on top of that the fact that they will need ...

This past week I had my first experience with online instruction. For the most part, I have been grading previous assignments and answering some questions on assignments I gave prior to the start of remote learning. I also began working on activities for my students to do at home. Trying to find fun things that students can do with the supplies they might have at home is likely the most difficult part. Questions that students have can be cleared up relatively easily by answering the questions students post on the assignments. Planning for available materials, on the other hand, is more difficult. There are many small items that students simply might not have at their disposal. For example, if a family doesn't have a printer they likely don't have printer paper. In the same lane, many people probably don't have glue sticks or other crafting materials. This lack of materials means that not all students would be able to create a more craft themed project. These proje...

This week I was using a schedule to help keep myself on track with my assignment planning. I was starting to feel a little more comfortable with my planning but now my cooperating center as well as many other schools in the country has closed and is moving to remote instruction for their students. Outside of my scheduled online classes, I don't have much experience with this learning format. I know that this method of education is a bit more student-driven as while the teacher provides the material the students must decide when and for how long they are going to work on it. Two students could put completely different amounts of time into the same project to get the same result. Learning how to effectively teach remotely will be another challenge that I am willing to take on. This will also be a good lesson for future use if a school that I am teaching at ever has to shift to a remote learning system for any length of time. Having a plan in place for this scenario would be...

This week my cooperating teacher has introduced me to an additional way to aid in my planning. Which is a plan for turning in different parts of my lessons at different times during the week. I think that this will greatly help me, I am working to implement changes to my schedule that better allow me to complete the materials that I need for any given day of the week. While I still feel a little overwhelmed the scheduled breakdown makes planning a little less overwhelming for me. One of the areas that I have struggled with an continue to struggle in is that I focus too much on what I will be teaching but I don’t focus on how I am going to teach it. This has made my planning more difficult causing me to stress out more than is necessary during my planning. By breaking the planning down and having different times to have my materials in I feel that my planning will continue to improve over the coming weeks. As it has been implementing the necessary changes is still dif...

This past week I was reminded of the importance of planning ahead in your classes. Not only for your own benefit but also if other teachers or staff members are involved. While you may be able to pick up the slack, so to speak, if your planning falls behind and only you are involved when there are other individuals needed for the planning this does not work out so well. When planning ahead you need to have your plans laid out far enough in advance so that you can have everything you need set aside for the activity/class that you are preparing for. By having these activities planned out far in advance you are able to avoid possible issues down the road if, for example, the facility you wanted to use was already in use by another teacher for their class. This advanced planning is also necessary if you are planning to have a lesson that requires resources in a different classroom. One slight issue that I can see with planning so far in advance is that if your school has many snow ...