Its official, Start of student teaching!

     It's the official start to my student teaching journey!  It feels like I have been preparing to step in to the role of being the teacher for a long time and I couldn’t be more excited to start. So heres some high lights of my first week of student teaching. 

 

    Monday, we started off at the PA FFA wid-winter convention at farm show. This was an awesome opportunity to see some of my students receive their first FFA jackets and seniors to receive their keystone degrees. I got to step into a teacher role during this and cheer on my students while they received their jackets and keystone degrees. This was only my first day on the “job” and I can’t wait until I get to have a larger role in helping students to pursue the different honors that FFA awards.  

    

Stepping into Dver on Tuesday felt like the true beginning of being a teacher for me. I got to meet a lot of the different staff at the school and start to form some connections with my students. It was very welcoming when different staff members came down to say hello and introduce themselves such as the CTC director, principle, as well as the two other Ag teachers at dover and a few teachers. I got the real feeling for what it meant to be teacher from sitting in on school committee meetings to covering classes, while also preparing for your own classes. This felt like a huge change for me by being in school all day which I haven’t done in a while and man was I tried by the end of the day. 

 

 Thursday, I got the opportunity to sit in on the FFA chapter officer meeting. During this time, I got to meet the officers and start forming some connections with them. Some of the highlights for me was being asked advice about college and getting to share my experience at Penn State with some students that have been accepted there. I also got the chance to observe more of Ms. Marsh’s classes since Dover has keystone testing earlier in the week. I got the chance to see students work on their invasive species ceiling titles, all of them were awesome. The students spent a lot of time making sure they looked great since they will be on display in the classroom ceiling. I also got the chance to see a fun review method called the unfair game that I’m excited to try out during my classes. I had the chance to play as a student when a team asked me to join in them to help (not sure how much help I actually was though). The students taught me a lot during this review, and it reminded me that as a teacher I need to study still to understand the material to ensure that I can help my student learn to the best of their abilities.  

 

    The students and staff at dover are wonderful and I’m excited to start teaching my classes and challenge myself to become a better teacher. This week also allowed me to continue working and improving my lesson plans that I will be teaching soon. Some of my goals with lesson planning is to have all my lessons prepared a week in advance to allow myself time to go over them with my cooperating teacher Ms. Marsh.