Week Five: Small Wins are Stills Wins

 Hello, faithful blog readers! Thanks for clicking and reading my blog post this week. 

I have just finished my fifth week of student teaching and I have worked my way up to teaching almost a full course load (minus one class). I taught my food science class for the first time this week. We talked about food labels and they started a meal planning project. 

This week, I experienced many small wins. And even though I had some minor successes, I still feel like I am barely able to keep my head above water - I have not gone under yet, but the constant feeling of the water right under my chin has been exhausting. Like when you are treading water and you get tired so you just start flailing and end up tiring yourself out even more - yeah that's the feeling. So I've decided to take this time to reflect positively on some of my small wins this week because even though I haven't quite figured it all out yet, a win is a win! 

Small Win #1 - Giving Directions

My goal for this week was to focus on being very clear with my directions. This week I tried a few different strategies including asking the students to explain the directions back to me, only giving one task at a time on Zoom and then having students type "done" in the chat so I knew we could move on, and visually posting the direction on the board during work times. For me and my students, the most effective strategy was posting the step-by-step directions on the board during work time. While this is extra work on my part, I found it made facilitating the class period much easier. This worked especially well when I had a student come to class late and he was able to get started with the first few steps because he saw the directions on the board before I made my way over to him to reexplain. 

This is an example of the slide I posted on the board for my Intro to Ag students. I definitely want to continue to do this in the future.

Small Win #2 - Trying New Things

They if say if there is something you want to try, student teaching is the time to do it. My animal science class is was learning about monogastric, ruminant, psuedo-ruminant, and avian digestive systems. The assignment listed in the CASE Curriculum asked the students to make a mural out of common household items and craft supplies that were representative of the digestive organ. Because some of my students attend school all online, I knew it would be a challenge to mail them the supplies and I also did not want students to have to purchase their own supplies just because they virtual academy students. So I changed the assignment to be a comic strip. This week my students presented their projects in class and I was FLOORED by their creativity. They exceeded my expectations for the project and many went above and beyond. Lately, I've been finding myself falling into the "lunchroom mentality" and focusing on all of the challenges I am facing, but if there was any indication that there is still hope in our educational system and that students want to learn it was my animal science students this week. 

Digestion Comic Strip Student Examples

Also, on the topic of trying new things, I went snow tubing for the first time with the Cumberland Valley FFA Officers and Committee Chairs on Friday evening. So much fun! Just another great example of making do with what you have, we were able to take a traditional event, make it covid-friendly, and still have a great time together!

Small Win #3 - Sharing A Personal Experience

Anytime you can take the topics students are learning about and share a personal experience or apply the content to a real-life situation, I think that is a win! This week, my Environmental Science students were wrapping up their biomes unit. We had some built-in flexible days to give students time to complete missing assignments and take a quiz, but I used one of our synchronous days to share a personal experience with my classes. A little over a year ago, I had the opportunity to study abroad over winter break in Chile with the Environmental Resource Management department. It was a life-changing experience, to say the least, but what I wanted to share with my students was about all the different biomes I was able to experience within just one country! I assembled my thoughts, photos, and anecdotes into a self-paced Pear Deck lesson that included audio on most of the slides. 

Here is the link: https://app.peardeck.com/student/tucaxipqy

We discussed the desert, tundra, grassland, and temperate biomes. I think the students enjoyed hearing a personal account of these places rather than hearing from a stranger in a YouTube video. A few of my more quiet classes even asked questions like "How hard was it to pack for this trip?" or "What was your favorite biome?". 

Looking ahead to next week I am very excited to celebrate National FFA Week. Cumberland Valley FFA is putting a new twist on some FFA traditions, come back next week to hear all about it!