Student Teaching - Day 10

Today was not my first day of teaching, but it was my first day to have develop the lesson plans relating to the curriculum, instead of coming up with some activities or discussions on the fly because Mr. Shartzer didn't have them doing anything. He said last week I could "start" Monday, and I did!

Although I'm not teaching his first block normally, I did want to talk about job interview skills with them because they are structuring the class much like a factory would structure jobs. They voted on a CEO, then today he interviewed 4 Executives, then those Executives interviewed their foreman and crew after that. Before we got into the interviews, though, I took the first half of class to talk to them about the Do's and Don'ts of an interview. I also gave them the laminated business cards I made last night that had Tips for Interviews on one side, and Do's and Don'ts on the other. I made these because I was certain that when they do go to interview for a real job in a year or two that they probably wouldn't have kept the notes from Ag Mech class, but they could keep the laminated card I made to fit their wallet.

In Wildlife, the major class I've planned lessons for, we discussed what wildlife really means, defined some official definitions of wildlife, then we broke into a jigsaw and discussed food & water, philosophy of wildlife, and cover. Once the group doing cover finished, I had them all sit back in their seats, close their eyes and choose an animal to be. Then I played on my iPod and portable speakers a thunderstorm soundtrack and read a description of a thunderstorm in nature. They were to imagine how their animal would take cover, and what other senses they felt during the storm. I then turned the music down and told them the storm had passed, then asked what they felt, saw, heard, etc. The animals they decided to be were funny - poison dart frog, elephant, lizard, lyger. And even funnier is that many of them didn't survive the thunderstorm - they said they were just "washed away". I also asked them if they felt panic, as if they didn't feel they could find over. I also asked if the cover that people did find was the only cover in the area. We then described how its important to be aware that we share our environments with these same animals, (well, maybe not the elephant and poison dart frog), and when we aren't good stewards of the land and animals, we could be negatively affecting an animal's habitat. We then did a different jigsaw discussing the 4 values of wildlife. Tomorrow (unless we have a snow day, because I think we will!), we're going to play a hunting/management practice ethics dilemma game. Fun!

In 4th block we discussed the important characteristics of an agribusiness person, and then played some games relating to some of those characteristics. Some of them required moving the desks and getting physical - I think they had a lot of fun, judging from the constant flow of laughter for most of the class. Those kids are great!

Final thought for today - I think we'll have two snow days in a row. Even though I have things planned out and I enjoy teaching so far, I still would love to be able to sleep in. I'm off to do the official, yet very secret, teacher snow dance!