This week I made a wonderful realization. I guess it finally hit me that I was a part of the school, faculty, and a steady person in my student's lives. Although I have probably been in this position for a couple weeks now,
in my heart I finally noticed this feeling of
understanding,
care, and
want to help students in any way I could. I only taught 3 days this week, due to President's Day on Monday and me dancing in THON on Friday, but I had so much fun . My classes seemed to go a bit smoother this week. I believe the subjects taught had me more enthusiastic and I was able to relate more to the students.
On Tuesday, during one of my prep periods, I had time to visit one of the science teachers
Mr. Spencer. Mr. Spencer was one of the tougher science teachers, but he was a great teacher to have because he was one who truly prepared students for college. I only observed him for one period, but I knew right away he commanded the room and knew his subject content in and out. I learned so much from the one observation period about using
tone of voice,
expression of important terms (telling the students straight up that this was important!), and his
setup of information depending on importance. I took these observations into my class on Tuesday and they were rather effective.
On Wednesday, I had a successful experience with one of my interest approaches. I was teaching IPM (Integrated Pest Management) and I wanted to stress how the environment can be affected by pesticides. I used a cup, coffee filters, and tea bags to represent pesticides going into the groundwater. The students in my class had a blast doing it, and saw it as a great visual representation. The best part was that there weren't any huge messes that I had to clean up!!!
My last day, Thursday, was a little weird. First of all, all of the freshmen were out of the school.
I say again, all the freshman were gone! That narrowed my classes down to only a couple for the whole day. In the last freshmen section, I only had 2 students. It was riveting lesson you didn't want to miss!!! (just kidding)
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| These two students were the only ones left in the class |
But on that day, since there were not many in my class, I received the opportunity to teach Mr. Boyer's HORT 2 class. This was a nice change because I don't normally teach them everyday, but they were learning about diagraming a golf course for a landscaping project and he wanted me to teach them all about golf terms! I couldn't believe I was going to teach
golf in an
Ag class!!! I went through a worksheet and was able to share my
10+ years of golf experience (wow I'm old)….while teaching. It was so awesome I couldn't believe it.
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| Teaching about Golf?!! This is my kind of class! |
Oh, and if you didn't catch it in the first picture, I rocked out the bow tie for my students on Thursday. I think this could be a good idea to do a Tie Thursday and give my students bonus points for wearing a tie. Who knows!
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| Bow Tie Thursday! |
I felt so sad leaving school on Thursday, because I was truly going to miss my students. But, the reason I was leaving was for another amazing cause…
THON. I will be dancing this weekend for 46 hours straight, with no sitting and no sleep. We will be raising money for the Four Diamonds Fund, and helping children fight pediatric cancer. THON means the world to me and sometimes words really can't do it justice. Here is a link to our THON page for the organization (Kappa Sigma) that I am dancing for, and another link just to show you what THON really is, because it's an amazing philanthropy.
THON Promo Video and Hype Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XXyQ5gfHT8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-Xr7PVqYxE
Kappa Sigma THON Donation page:
http://giveto.psu.edu/s/1218/thon/2012/index.aspx?sid=1218&gid=3&pgid=1250
It was a pleasure to write for you.
