With Everything, Be Deliberate

These past few weeks have gone by really fast. There was a week that my cooperating teacher was sick and I got the full experience of running an ag program followed by a week in which I only taught one day due to attending a conference, snow days, and a training at Penn State, and finally this past week in which I had to juggle preparing for and teaching classes with conducting research for my masters degree. Now with only four more weeks left of the student teaching experience it is surreal to think that after so much preparation and anticipation, I am closing in on the end of my pre-service training.

I have a lot on my mind at the moment and I want to write about many different things but I will focus on something that I feel that I have learned, and that I believe is valuable, not only to me, but perhaps to many others. I have learned that it is important to be where you are. What I mean by that is, where ever you are, whatever you are doing, make sure that you are conscious of your thoughts and deliberate in your actions. It is so easy to be distracted, especially from the very important and often times obvious things in life. I believe that that is why it is increasingly important to be deliberate in everything we do.

I was very anxious about being able balance work-life with the rest of my responsibilities, especially because "work-life" and everything else sometimes gets blended together in the life of an ag teacher. I was worried that I could not be a great ag teacher AND a great husband and father. It seems like it is always one or the other. But I have found that true balance comes from being purposeful in the way we conduct our lives. When I am at school, I am 100% at school. I am focused on what I need to do, I am aware of the needs of my students, and I am conscious of my responsibilities that I have as an educator. When I am at home, I leave my phone on the bookshelf and I try to do my best to be a great father even if that means playing "monster" when I really want to fall asleep on the couch.

People say all of the time that you have to "find a balance" and I used to believe that. Now, I'm not so sure that "balance" is something that you find, but instead, something that you create. It is a conscious decision as to what is important and how you are going to spend you life. At this point in my life, it is an active endeavor, meaning that it does not come naturally. My hope is that through this practice of living deliberately, that I will always be able to create a balance in my life that will lead to my own happiness and more happiness for those around me.

Classroom Management

I never want to think about certain students as "bad kids." I believe that some students have so much going on in their lives that teachers do not know about and they don't need another person in their lives telling them that they are not doing something right. That being said, I also recognize that I have the responsibility to create and maintain a classroom environment which is conducive all students can learn and grow both academically and affectively.

I have had some issues with one of my classes this semester. It is an eighth grade Introduction to Agriculture class the last period of the day. They are wild. It was getting to a point in which I really dreaded having to deal with them. I decided to implement a different strategy this past week and it seemed to be very effective. I created a spreadsheet with all of their names and a space for each day to give them strikes or plusses based on their behavior. Three strikes and they get a call home. Originally, I had thought that three strikes would mean that they would get a detention, but after a conversation that I had with another teacher I decided that it would be better to contact the parents first to include them in on the issue before it became a real problem. Also, if I catch them "dabbing" they have to do 10 push-ups because I find that annoying. Finally, to address excessive talking I make all students who want to answer a question or make a comment raise their hand. This ensures that the only conversation that is happening in the room is focused on what we are talking about unless they are working on a group activity.

So far, the results have been great. I don't dread that class, behavior issues have drastically declined and the students think of it as a game. It is funny how much kids like games.

It is definitely not the class with the most "freedom of expression," but unfortunately, some students prohibited it for the rest of the class from being such. Once I believe that I have complete control over the class I will start to experiment with giving students more freedom to attempt to find that balance.

I also want to try this strategy to see if it really does work.

Just Get Through to Week Seven

At our Pre-Internship Seminar I remember Dr. Foster saying these words, "Just get through to week seven." Well, at the end of week seven, I can honestly say that this past week was the first week that I actually thought to myself, "I may be actually able to do this." Maybe the university supervisors actually know what they are talking about.

This is also approximately the halfway point of the student teaching experience and a good time to reflect back on how far I have come and what I need to do to get to where I want to be as an educator.

First off, I'd like to talk about areas in which I believe that I have grown. I remember being a single college student and thinking to myself, "I have so much to do and not enough time." Now, I am wondering what the heck I was doing back then that was taking up so much time. I really think that it may that our culture has conditioned us to think that we are always too busy to get everything done. I believe that in reality, as we take on more responsibility and more of our time and energy is required to complete certain tasks, that we have to learn to manage our time effectively, recognize priorities, and focus on what is important. I believe that I have gained valuable skills in being able to manage my time effectively to be able to complete that which is required of me and that this will help me in my future endeavors.

Now, looking forward, I recognize that the area in which I need to improve is in classroom management. I have been battling with how to approach classroom management since before I started student teaching and I am torn. I don't want to be an authoritarian figure in the classroom that demands compliance and conformity from my students because I don't believe that that is how I will gain that rapport with my students and be able to empower them. That being said, I also recognize that sometimes students, especially eighth graders at the end of the day, need structure or they will, for some reason, turn into a group of lawless dissidents. Finding a balance is key and then adapting pedagogy to the circumstances is the challenge.

I use a lot of purposeful questioning to encourage the students to think critically and engage with me in the lesson. I believe that with all of my classes, with the exception of the eighth grade students, it has been effective. With the eighth graders however, it is just an opportunity for the students to blurt out the first thing that comes to their minds and then continue to chat with their peers about something tangential and very distracting.

Therefore, in the coming weeks, I will start to experiment with adjusting my pedagogy to meet the nuances of each of my classes to ensure that my interactions with my students are both empowering and conducive to task-oriented behavior.

Closing thoughts. I am not going to lie, student teaching has been tough and at certain times I questioned if teaching was right for me. But looking back I can see that I have come a long way in a short period of time and that is exciting to me. I am looking forward to being able to reflect back at the end of this experience and see how far I will have come.

SAE Visit #1

The first mustang that Alex received.
She was very interested in eating the
entire Science Night event.

This week I met up with Alex Eagles, a sophomore at Bald Eagle High School who currently has two active SAEs: a tractor restoration project and two mustangs which he has gentled. I took advantage of the Science Night event that occurred on Monday when Alex and his parents brought the tractor and one of the mustangs to the school. I had spoken to Alex on a few different occasions about his projects and had spoken with his father at the last Occupational Advisory Committee and was very impressed with these two projects of which Alex was very proud.

Alex's father told me that he had traded a horse for the 1959 International tractor years ago and had used it primarily to mow grass until he purchased a new tractor. At that point the tractor was left in the barn for a few years. It was in pretty rough shape when Alex decided to use it in his Ag Mech class and enter it into the Tractor Restoration Competition at this year's Farm Show in Harrisburg. 

Some "before" photos of the tractor on display at the Farm Show

I asked Alex how much he knew about tractors or mechanics in general prior to starting this program to which he responded, hardly any at all. But as Alex explained the process and transformation that the tractor went through I could tell that his knowledge surpassed my own. I asked him how he learned what he needed to know to get the tractor running and looking nice again and Alex responded matter-of-factly, "the manual and a lot of YouTube videos."

I could tell that he was proud of what he was able to accomplish with the tractor and even won $800 for the FFA Chapter at the farm show competition for having entered the tractor in the competition.

The finished tractor on display outside of Bald Eagle High School during Science Night caught the attention
of the many attendees of the event.