Week 9: student teaching

Week 9 of student teaching has taught me a very big lesson; you always have to be on your toes!  You never really know what could happen in a day so as a teacher you should always be on your toes and prepared to roll with the punches of the day.  This could be many different thins from exciting news, equipment malfunctions and just everyday surprises.  This week was sure to deliver!  When I started into this week, I knew we would be doing fun things in class and lots of activities but I had no idea what the week all would hold for me. Monday was a day full of electrical wiring, flower dissections and mock meetings; pretty regular day.  

Surprise!  Not exactly what you want to walk into on a Tuesday morning; water everywhere! 

Well Tuesday was sure to hold something special for us.  When Mrs. Fry and I arrived to school Tuesday morning, she opened the classroom door to an enormous puddle of water on the floor.  We quickly realized that the fish tank in the back of the classroom, that was home to our growing finger length Brook trout, had pumped about 40 gallon of water onto the floor overnight!  Thankfully not all of the water pumped out of the tank so the fish were still swimming around in about 3-4 inches of water however now all of that water now needed to be cleaned off the floor.   So Mr. Swineford, Mrs. Fry, one of our dedicated custodians, one of our tech ed teachers and myself quickly got to work to clean it up before our first class came in. With two mops, two shop vacs, and two giant fans it didn't take us too long to get it cleaned up and dry but definitely was not something we had planned to start our morning off with.  

Such a good clean up crew! 

Thursday was an exciting day for many of the members of the Selinsgrove FFA.  It was the SUN Area public speaking contest.  Mrs. Fry had been working with many of the members on their prepared speeches and our creed speaker.  My task leading up to the contest was to teach and couch the Parliamentary Procedure team.  This was the very first parli pro team that I have couched and I was very anxious the day of the contest.  I knew that they had been working hard and had came a long way since our first practice but I still knew that this was their first contest and my first time couching; wasn't sure we were completely ready to be honest.  After their presentation, they told me how terrible they did and how they knew that they were not going to do well.  Finally at the end of the day we go the results of all of the contest and the results were great!  We have two Senior Prepared speakers, two Conservation speakers, one Extemporaneous speaker and a creed speaker all qualified to go to the Regional Level.  All we had left to hear was the Parli Pro results and out of three teams, the Selinsgrove team took FIRST place!! I was so excited and proud of my students!!!

My very first Parli Pro Team!! 

The moment you learn that you just place 1st in Parli Pro! 

All of the Selinsgrove FFA Public Speaking Contestants!  

There were also many times throughout the week when students were able to surprise themselves.  I had one student who at first thought he would never be able to figure out how to do all of the wiring projects for electricity and this week he was the first of his classmates to finish them all!  Not only did his light bulb light up when we tried his 3-way switch but he face did too!  I also had a student this week who has really dug deep into our plant science unit and everyday I get to see his face when he has his Ahh - ha moments.  I curious to see what surprises this week holds for us in the classroom!

The Ag Foundations classes learned about how 

plant cells and animal cells are different this week 

and built their own models of plant cells out of 

different shaped pasta!