Week 9 Student Teaching Adventures!

Grand Canyon FFA at Hope Spring Farm

What a week my experience had to offer! From SLLC (my first time!), a school lockdown, a guest speaker, to docking and tagging lambs - there wasn't a dull moment this week! 

State Legislative Leadership Conference (SLLC) was definitely my highlight of the week. It's so great seeing all the great things that happen at FFA Conferences. The highlight of the highlight (if you will) would be the community service that FFA does. The Grand Canyon FFA chapter was assigned to Hope Spring Farm where we spent the afternoon assisting with various farm tasks. This was rewarding because Hope Spring Farm is a farm for disabled adults to come and do work. This is a place that they can enjoy the outdoors and completely be themselves.

Because of SLLC, I only taught for 3 days this week. In a way it was a nice break even though it was still work - it was just different! There were many things going on in just a short week, but I have the following thoughts on my week...

Tagging a lamb in the Animal Science II class

Positives:

• Being at SLLC with a small group of 6 students gave me the opportunity to get to know these students outside of the classroom!
• Leaving a lesson plan for a substitute is not what I thought - Simple is best! 
• Spontaneity can be a good thing - Bringing 2 lambs into the classroom wasn't planned until the day before when the opportunity presented itself. Ending a 2 day lesson on sheep was complete with tagging/docking lambs! The hands on aspect really stuck with the students!

Point of Improvement:

This week I want to improve my communication with students. Having a sub in the beginning of the week for SLLC caused some confusion with assignments. To accomplish this I set up a bellower/objective template. I'm going to try it with one class this week and then implement it in other classes if it goes well. Basically this sheet contains the objectives for the week and the bellower for each day with a box to fill in their answers. At the end of the week they will submit their filled in sheet back. I'm hoping this way that the objectives for each day are clearer for students and having to submit their bellower this way will ensure they look at the sheet and make the bellower purposeful!