With another week down, we are almost at the halfway point! It is crazy how fast the semester is moving. I will be student teaching in no time. I went home this weekend after several busy weeks on campus. I was able to hit the woods Saturday morning for the first day of archery. I did not see any deer during my time in the woods but I was able to reflect on the week and look ahead to the coming week. First, I reflected on the past week of classes. On Monday in AEE 412, I learned how to properly conduct a classroom demonstration. I was exposed to a three step method that I will definitely utilize in during my student teaching experience. During that same class period, I also learned five characteristics of cooperative learning. I was somewhat unfamiliar with what constitutes cooperative learning but felt more confident after class on Monday.
This past week was also the PA FFA’s Fall Leadership Conference in Altoona on Wednesday, October 1st. I was one of three student teachers running the treasurer workshop. This was my first time attended the conference and also my first time in an actual teaching setting this year. We had two and a half hours to teach a group of 21 PA FFA chapter treasurers about their position and duties. I feel that the workshop went well overall! The students learned a lot of information and had fun while doing so. I taught two activities during the workshop.
For the first activity, I was nervous and shy. I feel like I rushed through the information and did not perform as well as I would have liked. About halfway through our lesson, we changed things up a bit and had the students play the human knot game. This broke up the information overload they were receiving and demonstrated leadership and cooperation skills. It was after I took part in this activity that I felt so much more relaxed and confident! For the second activity, which occurred after the human knot game, I felt so much more comfortable in front of the students and performed much better while teaching! To wrap up the week, we discussed effective questioning and instruction in AEE 412 on Friday. I found this class very beneficial and started thinking ahead to implementing effective questioning into my classes during student teaching.
Looking ahead to this week, class will focus on individualized teaching techniques and problem solving approaches to learning. I was very fond of the readings in Newcomb’s Methods of Teaching Agriculture book this week. Chapter 7, Individualized Teaching Techniques, provided great insight into the individualized teaching method. Students learn different ways, at different paces, and have differing background knowledge in agricultural content areas. Newcomb describes supervised study, experiments, independent study, and the use of notebooks all as effective individualized teaching techniques. I found it interesting that the basis of an SAE project combines the idea of all four of these techniques into one!
I am gaining many perspectives about teaching and am viewing it in a different light. When I am sitting in class, I observe my professors and form connections with the teaching techniques and strategies I have read about. I make mental notes in my mind of what works well and how I can implement these into my future classroom one day. I have reflected on Fall Leadership Conference and that gave me the opportunity to see what worked for me and what areas I still need to improve upon. I know that the more teaching experience I have prior to student teaching, the better my performance as a student teacher will be!
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