Everyday is Worth it

On Fridays after my block four students leave for the day I have a great routine. I sit at my desk and I think, wait and converse with the other Ag teachers. I think about the week, replaying the highlights over in my mind and pondering the road ahead. I wait for the thinking to be completed, and by that time I reflect via my weekly blog.

This week is a little different, I have sat, I have chatted, and I am still thinking...

so lets look at my thoughts

Its for the students, we push, encourage, and stretch our students because we know that they can achieve our high expectations.

They will continue to amaze us, every single day my students haven't stopped amazing me yet. Just when they reach that point of total distraction and you think all is lost they say the most brilliant things and you see that what you are teaching is really hitting home with them.

The power of choices, this week I have been trying to give my students more choices. The choice of how much time we need to complete a task, the choice to pick a partner but I build groups, the choice to wire or go to the technical school presentation. I like choices and so do students. Sure some things we just have to do, but the power lies in the choices.

One on one student attention is always the most powerful, Friday I had the opportunity to work one on one with one of my Ag Mechanics students that is ahead in wiring. He has completed all of the required wiring schematics and now I am providing him new challenges. With some of my students at the Wyotech presentation I was able to provide him one on one attention while we worked through the new challenging wiring schematic on the board. I think he is secretly excited for the challenge, seeing that he has almost completed challenge 1, some times it is all how you present choices to students, something I will continue to work on.

This past Thursday was our awards night where 20 alumni came back to judge 70 interviews to recognize student achievements. It was a powerful experience to see the planning that was involved to pull off such a night. In addition, it was amazing to see the power of the Alumni coming together to give back to a chapter that built them.

Well the thoughts are now being lost among the yawns from a long week chalked full of meetings and late nights but my final thought lies in comfort.

Comfort is a term I use cautiously, we all know that comfort lies with not changing, expanding, or growing, which is not the case. The comfort that I am experiencing is the comfort that I feel interacting with my students. The comfort that I feel being apart of this Ag program for the next 10 weeks. The comfort that I feel with being in the classroom. The comforts does not lie with the challenge of teaching and learning the materials to feed the curious minds. The comforts lie with feeling like I am apart of this, this is real life, and I am loving it. I'm not saying that every second is marked in gold, but so far it is more than worth it.

Well thats all for this week, now time to gear up for the ACES conference, yea I'm an Ag Teacher and I spend my Valentines Day helping students become the leaders that I know they will be.

Till next time...