Week 13: Student Teaching

This week was short and fast and this week I was able to learn to vital lessons for an Ag Teacher.

So many hanging baskets!  The greenhouse is getting fuller by the day! 

Lesson 1:  You HAVE to make time for yourself and your family!  
This week started with having a day off from out spring break and with that spring break I was able to travel home and visit with my family.  It is very easy to get swept up in the hectic and chaotic schedule as an Ag teacher and if you let yourself be completely and utterly be consumed by your job, you can shut out family unintentionally.  I believe that I have done a good job of keeping good balance during my student teaching experience however, I realize how easy it is to get too busy. 

Speaking for myself, I know that I am so passionate about what I do and for helping these students to be the best version of themselves that it becomes extremely hard at time to say "No" however, we also need to make sure that we are the best version of ourselves as teachers.  Having time to be with family or to just go a do something for yourself, will help to keep that vital balance in our lives and to keep us on that path to become the best teacher we can be for our students. 

The students in Ag Leadership were able to teach their peers with the Teach Ag Essay Content!  

 Lesson 2:  Tying up the loose ends!  
This week I had three of my units all coming to a close at one time.  I though that this would make my life a lot easier since we were going to end what we are on and move on to the next thing.  Simple right, give a test or collect the projects/rubrics and grade them all; wrong!  This made it a lot harder for myself.  Not only did I have all of those projects and tests to grade then all at the same time but I also failed to realize that for shop classes, you need to plan for time to clean up and prepare for the next project. 
We had just finished our electricity wiring projects and it was time to put all of the supplies and materials away so we could move onto plumbing.  The students did a great job of keeping the shop clean as they worked on their projects however now it was time that we had to organize all of the supplies and tear our projects apart.  I failed to ever think that part of the unit through.  It wasn't the end of the world, we just took a day to clean all of our electrical materials up but I did take a day away from my fool-proof schedule. 
With every class, no matter if it is a shop class or not, you always need to give yourself a day at the end of a unit to tie up any loose ends from the unit.  This could be to clean up supplies like I talked about, it could be for extra time for student presentations (because they always seem to take more time than planned)  or this could be just to wrap up any more questions or ideas about the topic at hand and to transition into the new one.  I will always plan for a day to tie up loose ends, if you don't need it then you can easily move on but always give yourself some cushion time.