Week One: Broadband, Biology, and Bernie

If I had to describe the week in one word, I would choose historic. This week was not just historic for the country, but also for me personally. Vice President Kamala Harris made history when she was sworn into her role, Bernie Sanders broke the internet, and I completed my first week of student teaching in a pandemic! What a time to be alive! To complicate things more, I have been without WiFi since Monday and my school closed for remote instruction on Thursday evening. And for all you quick thinkers out there putting two and two together - yes I am writing this blog from a McDonald's parking lot. Fingers crossed the internet in my apartment is back up and running before Monday. 

In other news, I picked up my first course on Thursday. I instructed the Plant Science class in the morning face-to-face and in the afternoon via Zoom. Together, we reviewed my classroom procedures, expectations, and consequences. Based on my early interactions with students, I do not anticipate any major classroom management problems, but it always good to set the expectations at the beginning versus after there is a problem. 

The lesson progressed by me leading the students through taking notes on the different types of cells. I knew that I would not have a full class period to cover this topic because of reviewing my classroom procedures, expectations, and consequences and getting to know the students; however, I did underestimate how long 40 minutes was. I think a part of me was still in AEE 412 lab where we had only 20 minutes to teach entire lessons. But like all great Guise women, I was quick on my feet, adapted, and persevered. I instructed the students that they should use the last 10 minutes of the period to work on outstanding assignments since the end of the marking period was on Friday. In the end, it was not the end of the world that my lesson was on the short side because now I have a much better feeling of how long the periods are and can plan accordingly, plus the students got time to work on their missing assignments.

Additionally, instead of just flipping through a PowerPoint, I was able to play video notes from the CASE YouTube channel. I hope to continue doing this in the future because it brings the auditory and visual modalities together. I would pause the video every now and then to make a clarifying point, ask the students a question, review information covered, or give the students time to write. I think the students liked taking notes this way because it was something new.

For me, a high and a low for this lesson would be as follows:

High: The students seemed to be very responsive to the kinesthetic cues I used throughout the lesson. If I was giving students a moment to write down the notes on the board I would say "Give me a thumbs up when you are ready to move on". As a teacher, this was a simple way for me to track who was with me and who was not with just a quick scan of the room or Zoom screens. 

Low: In my lesson, I did include an interesting approach by relating plant anatomy to human anatomy; however, I did not clearly make connections for the students as to why this topic was important. Next week, I hope to be able to create more excitement around the topics I am teaching and highlight the why behind what we are covering. 

Stay tuned as I pick the Introduction to Agriculture class next week and continue working with the Plant Science class. I am going to take a stab at implementing social-distanced laboratory activities using microscopes for my classes on Monday, Thursday, and Friday.

#PSUAgEd2021 how was your first week? How are you navigating synchronous and asynchronous instruction?