Back to the Start

Hello World,

Long time no see friends, it has been a few weeks since my last blog so I thought it was in my best interest to share some of my experiences over the last few weeks.  Where to begin?

 I am now officially teaching the three sections of Agriscience and the one section of Animal Science.  Monday I take over the Advanced Animal Science and in a few weeks I will start teaching my section of Biology.  For those of you that dont know I decided that I wanted to observe and teach a section of Biology during my time at Southeast Polk in order to gain valuable experience and insight into this area (since i'll probably end up teaching it).  I am starting to understand why teachers consider paperwork the enemy.  Student papers litter my desk daily and I have to work diligently to keep the mountain from teetering over (this is one of my daily battles).

One thing that has kept me up the past two weeks is the concept of grading and late work.  I have discussed the topic with several different teachers in varying departments and have come to one conclusion.  NO ONE has the same grading policy.  So how does a new teacher and a student teacher for that matter develop their own working philosophy on grading? Trial and error my friends, trial and error.  I have tried two late assignent policies now and am on my way to a third.  What does this do to my students?  Well confuses them, they have been used to grading and late work one way and here I come saying this is the way it is.  I am trying my best to smooth the transition by ensuring that students have all their late work in prior to my implementation of my new policy.  This will leave no questions as to how I am going to grade an assignment from that point on. The final goal would be a fair, working representation of a late work/ grading policy that is not only beneficial to the students, but to my administrative work as well.

Another thing that haunts my dreams at night is the concept of a inquiry based classroom and ensuring the involvment of each and every student.  My supervising teacher passed along a great article via twitter a few days ago and it has got me thinking and changing some of my strategies.  Management of classroom behaviors during projects or activities has been an interesting struggle that I spend much of my time dwelling over.  Curbing unwanted behavior without destroying one the teacher-student relationship and  two without changing the working environment for other students.  I find that when I give students a problem with instructions to complete a project to investigate that problem there is always a set of students that grasp the "challenge"  and run with it and there are also almost always another set of students that show little to no interest.  This division in interest and activity is the hardest problem I have faced so far during my student teaching and probably in my life.  I want to invlove each and every student.  I want to inspire them to learn not because I told them to, but because they want to.  Some of you reading this may think "O look at this young idealist, wait until you get a few years down the road, your thoughts will change."  Why should they?  This should be the challenge every teacher battles.  For those of you teaching.  Look around your classroom the next time you give students an assignment or project to work on, why are they doing it?  Because you gave them the assignment and you will give them a bad grade if they dont do it?  Or are they working on it because they are truely interested in the content?

I said today to my supervising teacher that I wish I could go back to the start of my student teaching experience and approach a few matters in a different manner.  My grading, classroom management, organization, etc..  have all changed over the past few months due to my experiences.  This change is hard not only on me, but also my students.  I've got a long two months left where I am sure I will learn much more about this profession, my students, and myself.  Will I make mistakes, "ummm yea", but I plan on learning from those and moving forward.  Do I wish I could go back to the start, sometimes yes, but if I went back and did everything correct how would I learn?

Thanks for listening.

The Nature of The Beast

Hello World,

So here I am almost done with my first week of teaching four classes, one section of Animal Science and three sections of Agriscience and I can already see my methods adapting to what I have learned from the past few weeks.  For those of you that know me you know that I am a very "let's stick to the plan" or "we have to stay with the timeline" type of individual.  I have already found that in teaching that is not going to work. I have found that if I think an activity or project will take two days it will most likely take three.  This delay in completion does not come from lack of time management or higher degree of difficulty in the project; I believe that for students to do a project correctly and to absorb the information properly they cannot be rushed through a project or an activity.  Let’s take the project I am having my Agriscience  class do this week, they are to explore the water cycle by creating a "storyboard" of the various steps in the water cycle, then write a fictional story of how a water droplet travels through the cycle.  Fairly easy, right?  Well what I have discovered is that if you do an activity to get them involved with the information, in this case a step-by-step storyboard, it will take longer for them to process the information than you originally thought.  If you rush forward and several of them do not understand the process or the material, they will not gain the understanding or mastery of the topic you have set as a classroom goal.  This mastery/understanding "should" ultimately be your classroom goal and if you are not adapting to the students in your classroom so they can learn the material, then there is something wrong there.  I have been working on this adapting to student learning and process time this week and I think overall my students understand the content fairly well.

Ok, enough about the classroom methods for a moment and let’s talk about something most schools have frequent discussions about, budgets!!! What I have learned this week about budgets is, always order your materials early in the year and order heavy!!!  This is a part of teaching I had never even thought of and have been exposed to during this process and have seen in action.  The reason as an educator you order early and you order heavy is to make sure you use your budget when you have it.  Towards the end of the year school budgets start getting tight and they may pull the remaining funds from department budgets to cover expenses or deficits.  If you use it early when there is plenty of money around you have the supplies you need all year round.

I am learning and developing my strategies every day and so far I think it’s gone well.  Have I made mistakes?  O YEAH! Have I learned from them?  Yes I have. That’s what this experience is all about trying new methods and strategies so when you take over your own classroom you do not fall flat on your face.  The more I learn the more I feel I don't know and the more roadblocks that surface in my path.  And that my friends is the nature of this beast we call education.  So I leave you with this, continue to develop your methods and strategies as a teacher and spend your budgets early.

"A beast does not know that he is a beast, and the nearer a man gets to being a beast, the less he knows it."- George MacDonald