"Being challenged in life is inevitable, being defeated is optional." - Roger Crawford. Over the past couple of weeks, we have been entering a new normal with preparing lessons online for our students. Never did I foresee anything like this during my student teaching internship. I am being challenged in a new way that will shape the rest of my career.
Moving through this new normal is not easy. This past week I had prepared online enrichment opportunities for my students that will be published next week. Finding resources wasn't difficult, but deciding how to frame it for my students was the challenging part. I wanted to be sure they understood what I wanted them to accomplish. Writing down instructions is so much harder than speaking and demonstrating the steps or procedures.
I am hoping we can soon get back into the classroom. I am missing my students and the connections between my co-workers.
Questions
- How are you handling this situation in your district?
- What advice do you have for beginning teachers entering this profession moving past this situation?
The SAE component of Agricultural Education is an important aspect that gives students the work-based experience to develop skills that can be translated into a career after high school. My second SAE visit that I had gone on was a market dairy beef. She works with her animal daily to ensure it is ready for the fair. The visit had occurred at the student's home to weigh the dairy beef to determine its daily growth.
Prior to Visit
Before we went to the SAE site, we reviewed her record books on AET to see if they were up to date and accurate for the time of year. We checked both her journal entries and financial entries.
Evaluation and Recommendations
We evaluated the weight of the dairy beef to see how much weight was gained since the previous visit. After a little math, we determined how much the daily gain was of the dairy beef. Once we finished weighing both her animals, Mr. Kalupson recommended keeping giving the dairy beef as much feed as possible to keep the daily gain high enough for the sale at the fair.
Overall Observation
I enjoyed watching and helping Mr. Kalupson complete this visit. I had learned a lot about how to use their scale as well as work with students in the unique setting of their supervisor on an out of school experience.
After a week of uncertainty and stress of the unknown, we made through at Solanco. This week was one of the worst weeks I've had so far. Besides the obvious, I have had a hard time motivating myself to push through when we were uncertain of so many things. I know that it is not good to lose motivation over something like the coronavirus, but I struggled to motivate myself.
Upbeat Update
In my Ag Business course this week I decided to try something new. I had put together a learning lab with runts candy. Through the activity, students were to practice accounting skills as well as learn the cost of merchandise sold theory. Students were broke into groups of 3 or 4 then given three ziplock bags that each had a different amount of runts in them. The bags were as follows; Jan. 1 Inventory (2/3 box of runts), Purchased Inventory (1/3 box of runts), and Merchandise Sold (empty). As they performed the steps in the activity, they were to keep track of how much total inventory they had and what was sold through the year. In the end, they had to calculate their total inventory on Dec. 31 and add in leftover inventory to see if the numbers matched. The students enjoyed the hands-on activity especially when they could finally eat the runts.
Questions
- How do you keep students focused during a time of turmoil and uncertainty?
- If you had to teach Ag Mechanics courses online, how would you go about that task?
This week I feel like I started to get into the flow of being a teacher. Even though I am not a full-time teacher, I believe that I can handle the business of the day. I am enjoying all the aspects of the job.
Highlights
I have found that I am not good at welding using oxy-acetylene. I did a demonstration this week and it was a flop. It was a good teaching moment though since I could tell my students that I am still learning, and I challenged them to weld better than me. Some of them have! Two of my students in Small Engines class finished putting their engine together and decided to blow it up to see what damage would be done. Once they took the engine apart, they found that the connecting rod had broke. This week was full of fun experiences!
Questions
- How do you motivate students that do not care about grades or anything about school?
- What strategies are out there to manage an agricultural mechanics lab?
