Student Teaching Adventures... Week 5!

Natural Resources studying pelts, sounds, and prints of PA wildlife

The fifth week of student teaching has come to an end (sort of!). I should really say the classroom part has ended for the week, but my week is longer this week because of the excitement of ACES weekend. I write this as I think about what I need to pack to prepare for a few more days with Grand Canyon FFA members in Harrisburg. There have been some fun highlights of the week that make me excited to see how the rest of my experience will go.

I paid special attention to the Natural Resources class this week since I will start taking that class over next week. The subject matter is especially interesting to me (you may or may not know that I interned at the Carbon County Environmental Education Center), but the class seems to be more of a handful than I'm used to. They are not bad students in any way, just a very lively group of gentlemen that are always moving around and talking. I'm excited to have a small class in a subject area I like, but I will have to really stretch myself to make sure I can entertain these students!

Plant Science students designing a heart arrangement

Intro to Ag students designing a single rose arrangement for V-day

Many of the agriculture teachers (and student teachers) see this weekend as another weekend of ACES, but tend to almost forget that this weekend is Valentine's Day! Although I haven't started teaching Intro to Ag or Plant Science just yet (they're the last 2 classes I pick up!), I paid extra attention to their activities this week. To celebrate Valentine's, Mrs. Berndtson taught both classes briefly about floral design and allowed the Intro to Ag students to design a single rose arrangement while the Plant Science students designed a biedermeier heart out of carnations and other filler flowers. I will be teaching the floral design unit in Plant Science in a few weeks and paid attention to these activities because my experiences with plants and florals are limited. Students designing these florals was not only fun, engaging, and creative for students, but also showed just how important agriculture is. Some students might not realize the role agriculture has in some of these holidays!