Meetings, late nights, and a tractor pull… all in a weeks work

Where has the time gone, only two more weeks at Penn Manor, but for now lets look at how this past week went.

It was a typical week of long days, meetings, and a little extra on Saturday. This past week I  went though a mock interview, attended the FFA meeting,  fair board meeting, and the Eastern region PAAE meeting and then to top it off attended and attempted to help with my first ever tractor pull on Saturday.

Looking back on the week I can barley remember what I did on Monday, in fact I had to look back at my lesson plans to refresh my memory… thats always the sign of a great week.

This week my Ag Science 3 class worked on their land use projects as we began to talk about erosion as well as on farm erosion control methods. Something amazing happened in this class this week… we went through a 13 slide powerpoint and it was a true moment of learning. There was greta discussion,  example, and true learning and connections being made and I have no idea why.  Well thats a lie I have an idea of why but how does one ever know for sure… I think I have finally gained the respect of THE Student. You know the student that can control the tone and pace of your class at times. Now this student isn't bad by any means, just challenging at times, but highly interested in the topic areas. To recap I believe I actually gained his complete respect about a two weeks ago… this is the first powerpoint I have used since then so it was a true test.

As I diverge again from this weeks reflection I want to reflect on something that overwhelmed me this fall as I prepared to student teach. If you looked through my binders in the fall you would see one thing in common for most every lesson, some type of powerpoint... power points for days, I couldn't live without them… till now. Now I dread power points, I cut out all fluff and only present the main ideas in a few simple slides… if that at all. I have noticed that I provide a few more powerpoint for my freshman students but even then they are far and few between. I have been reaching to find new and creative ways to share information with my students, or guide them to find the man points on their own… it is possible to teach without powerpoint… who knew :) 

Anyway back to this week, my Intro to Ag Mechanics class kicked off the real meat of their welding unit as we went through safety and the fundamentals of welding. On top of this my students drew out the plans for their tool gauge project. Let me digress about how much I was not looking forward to teaching and getting this tool gauge drawn… mainly because it took me several attempts and much help to understand and be able to draw it out correctly, I sure am glad I practiced! However, it actually went very well and my students are pretty excited about the project. It could be the fact that I keep telling them how awesome it is because they get to use hacksaws!!!! they have no idea that it won't be quite as much fun as Ms. Miller lets on. It's just another time where I can see and have experienced how important it is to bring the passion and enthusiasm to the classroom, because if you don't the students won't either.

As I said there were a lot of meetings and commitments this week, but when aren't there. Perhaps the most exciting commitment was attending my first ever tractor pull. It was great to see the students working for the success of an event, and see how possible an event like this could be with the right help and community support, just another idea to keep in mind for my future FFA chapter.

Well thats about it for this week as I prepare to plan for the upcoming week, it looks pretty quite besides a few meetings and events.

Till next time…Meetings