NAAE Communities of Practice Reflection


Hello, my name is Abbie Smith, and this Spring I had the opportunity to student teach at Northern Burlington Regional Middle School and High School, with Dr. Robin Mclean, Mr. Keith Dannucci, and Mr. Brian Hayes. During this experience, I spent the majority of my time with Dr. McLean teaching Agri science 7, Agri science 8, and CASE AFNR. I also taught Advanced Animal Science with Mr. Dannucci and I spent five weeks with Mr. Hayes and his Small Gas Engines class.


In addition to the teachers that I worked with directly, I got the opportunity to work with a great team of teachers, administrators, and staff at both schools. Each individual I had the opportunity to work with had something to teach me during the experience. Thanks to this varied experience I have a few different takeaways from my student teaching experience.


1. Be Proactive: By being proactive in my planning and other activities I will be better able to serve my students. I have made strides in my planning skills throughout my internship; however, I still have a way to go. By continuing to become more proactive I can ensure that I have all materials I need for my students and I will be able to request the space I need for different activities.


 2. Familiarity leads to comfort: One big thing that I noticed is that the more familiar I was with a concept the more comfortable I was with presenting it to my classes. By taking different classes and courses through Penn State Extension I hope to gain more knowledge in the areas I have less background knowledge in. By doing so I will become more familiar with the concepts and more comfortable when teaching them. As I expand my own knowledge, I will also be better able to serve my students, since I will have a better understanding of topics and concepts, we discuss I will be better able to explain them and offer better resources to my students.


 3. Don’t be afraid to reach out: In any career communication is key, this is especially true when you are working with people. By reaching out to people in your community, school, and other agriculture teachers you will be able to build relationships that can aid you and your students in their future trials. I know that communication is one factor that I have struggled with throughout my student teaching career. However, as I have moved forward, I have learned that I cannot rely solely on myself and my abilities. While they are key to having a good program there are many moving parts to having a good program, this includes the school staff and community involvement.


During my student teaching experience, I learned the value of each of these concepts. By fostering growth in these areas I hope that I will be able to continue to grow and improve as an individual and teacher.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Running the Classroom

Image
This week during student teaching I taught two different classes. An eighth-grade class and a seventh-grade class. I also got to assist in facilitating a dissection in two advanced animal science classes. Each of these experiences was interesting in its own way. During the dissections, I found that I am still not completely comfortable with dissections. While I know anatomy fairly well and can point out different organs in images that of dissecting something makes me uncomfortable. I know that depending upon what school I end up at I may need to lead some dissections on my own. Due to this, I will need to work towards becoming more comfortable dissecting things. For those of you who perform dissections with your students, what have you done to become more comfortable with the process? What other similar activities would I be able to do with students until I get more comfortable? I enjoyed teaching the middle schoolers, as for the most part they seemed more enthusiastic about
Read more
Back to School Week Fall 2019 RTL Reflection This has been an exciting and stressful week back to school. During this week we did our first pre-teaching lesson of the semester. I was feeling alright before my scheduled lesson but as soon as I started my mind went blank and I forgot what I wanted to say. I knew what I needed to say but I felt like I couldn’t get the words out. Through my classmates and instructors, I found that I did better than I thought I did. I know that I still have a ways to go but I look forward to seeing how I progress through this semester. One of the things that I did notice rewatching my lesson is that I appeared less stressed than I felt during the lesson. However, in spite of this, I had trouble deciding what I was going to say and how I was going to say it. Due to this, the main question that I have is how do I keep myself calm while I am giving a lesson? Even when I feel I know the material well or I am simply very interested in the topic I have troubl
Read more

First Days of Teaching

Image
During this past week, I had my first experience actually teaching at my cooperating center. The middle school students overall seemed to enjoy the first day of my teaching where they got to use Nearpod to learn interactively during their lecture. Due to this, I think that I may use Nearpod more often in future lessons, as the students enjoy it and they are not overly difficult or time consuming to make. The second day however they did not seem to enjoy the lesson very much as they didn’t seem to be paying attention at times, I think this is due to the lesson being dry. I played clips for them about three of the different agricultural career pathways, which admittedly were likely meant for older students. I am working on making a more interactive way to teach them about the remaining pathways. While I know that not all lessons are going to be fun ones I would like to have as many interactive lessons as possible. I feel that this will help my students learn as this way they are d
Read more