Student Teaching: Week 3

I have officially been teaching a week!  I never thought that I would actually get to say that I have finished a week of my student teaching but it has come and gone already!  This week was crazy and hectic but I loved every second of it!! We had two unplanned fire drills and a fundraiser delivery and lots of fun filled lessons.  With this week winding down and coming to a close, I'm walking away with two big lessons learned.

1. Never Under Estimate Anything!
For my building construction class this week, we were learning about how to be safe in the shop and how to respond to emergency situations.  Part of the unit was where students learned about what injuries can happen in the shop and what should we do when an injury occurs.  We also learned some basic first aid skills with this lesson that way if students ever are working at there home or once they graduate and go into the field they will know not to panic and how to help in the situation.  We did two activities with this lesson. 

Learning how to correctly

remove "dirty" gloves.  

The first one was where students learned how to properly take off a pair of non-latex gloves.  I first demonstrated how this is to be done then students practiced a few times on their own.  After mastering the skill, students put their gloves on and I asked them to take them off one last time however this time their gloves were covered in shaving cream.  They had to coat the front and back of their gloved hands with shaving cream and then removed them correctly with out getting the shaving cream on their skin.  The second activity was learning how to bandage a cut simply using a roll of gauze.  Again I demonstrated to do this skill, then in pairs one person would play the role of in injured and the other would bandage them.  Once they showed me their correct bandaging skills, they switched roles and did it again.

How to properly

bandage a wound.  

I knew that if these activities were going to be fun for the students and also was a great way for them to learn these basic skills that are done wrong all the time.  Now this building construction class is a small class of only 10 students but they are all juniors and senior and only one is female.  The rest is teenage boys.  They have been really good for me and hoped that they could make it through the activities but part of me went into the lesson thinking that I was going to have to pull the plug.  I was just waiting for one of them to take that hand covered in shaving cream and smack one of the others or to smear it all over each other.  I also feared that they would try to tie each other up with the gauze or who knows what with it. 
However these guys did great!  They made it through the how class and were very mature but still had fun with it just like I hoped.  That's when I realized that I should never under estimate students.  They will always come out of no where and surprise you in what they know or how they can act.  I am going to make sure that I do a lot more fun activities with this class as they have proven to me that they can handle it!  Great job!!

2. One word ......PACING!
This has been my problem all along.  Even when we would do our teaching labs back on campus, I would have problems with my pacing.  I always take so much longer than I think it will take.  This week I had a super fun activity planned for the Ag Foundations class but we were unable to get to it this week because I took way to long to cover other things during class.  Thankfully we are still going to be able to do it this week so I'm not going to tell you what it is now but you can hear all about it next week :)
I have to start getting a little better at my pacing of the class.  I guess the one good thing is that I never run out of things for the students to do during class, but next week we are going to have to be one point to fit everything in and not slow the class down.  I know that this is something that can take a while to get perfect and really know how to do but I at least acknowledge that it is something that I need to keep an eye on for myself.  I feel like I have my planning down and do a great job of switching up teaching methods but I have got to get a little better at my pacing that way we are able to get to these great things I have planned!

 Going into this week, I am definitely going to work on my pacing and we ARE going to get to do this fun activity that I have had planned for weeks.  Look for my blog next week to see how week 4 went and what kind of adventures we got into at Selinsgrove!!!