As I was happily falling asleep last night, in the hopes of a snow day today, I was rudely awakened to the memory of student teaching journals -- did I turn them in?!?!!?
Apparently not. Epic fail, Hannah. Epic fail. I'll kick myself about this for the rest of forever this year. Not awesome. And, no doubt, I will be reminded about the necessity of being punctual with assignments after this one mistake; because, after all, I should be the example as an educator, right? of course. Brilliant, just what I've always wanted, more reassurance that I fail miserably for forgetting to turn in my journals that I had completely prepared but simply spaced on turning them in. If only I were a better student... if only I were perfection itself....

Regardless, today was, after all, a snow day. Which is awesome because it means I can actually spend time working through my resources and do more on my work samples. Yes, sadly, I have not done much on them recently because I got a big hit in the face with the realization that I completely have no idea how, and therefore completely suck at writing lessons, not to mention all my grad school assignments that are associate with them. That lesson learned the excruciatingly difficult and humiliating way, I press on and force myself to do better this time - and perhaps teach myself how to write them, considering I still don't understand (although supposedly, I technically already "know") how.

I spent the better part of today pulling apart every class I am working with, and all the lessons I am putting together for them. Journaling ideas for one class, handouts, powerpoints and activities for another, whole lesson planning and ideas for another class I am working with, contacting guest speakers for one of my work samples, looking through my old notes in classes I took to help me better understand remember information about topics I already learned but need to re-learn in order to teach them.

Worked a bit more on memorizing kids names for the classes I haven't worked with much yet utilizing the photographic attendance sheet I was able to print off from the school.

Today is 01-11-11, which translates to 11111 in binary... which is the number 31. I am a nerd. 

There is an FFA meeting tonight, where we are to have hot chocolate and discuss things such as buying animals for this year's fair, how district Ag Sales went, and the upcoming public speaking event. 

The weather looms and ever threatens to dump endless snow and freezing rain on us, so as such, the entire student body prays for a snow day -- or a least a late start. The catch is that tomorrow is a 2-hour early release, which means that with a late start, each class period would be a mere 23 minutes with a 30 minute lunch. Lunch longer than class? weird. 

I was able to spend part of my day brainstorming through my upcoming lessons with a friend today to see that I was making them engaging and entertaining - in addition to being interesting. Trying to find interesting and engaging ways to get students to write in their journals, so part of that included clever ideas for journaling. So far ideas include: how and why would one weld with a light saber? Do welders work better on Monday or Friday? What will welding in the future be like? What is welding like in space? ...weird as they may sound, I'm going to try them out this next week to see if it gets them to write.

No official FFA activities today, so last night I took off for Portland to spend the weekend with my sister and her housemates, go to the most awesome church in the world, and work on lesson plans. Working on lesson plans is an endless up hill battle. Needless to say, I’m continuously stressed to the point of distress – which is a stressful thought in itself. On the up-side though, I will have to say that I feel better about putting together my lesson plans than I have before, even though every single cell of me doesn't want to work on them at all, I will muster up all my energy and work on them.


I'm trying to think of some creative ways to talk about topics in class... maybe outrageous, but more interesting - and ways that are my own. I'm finding that I've spend a lot of the last week just mimicking the cooperating teachers here. It's not a bad thing, I suppose, but really isn't a good thing either. But what really IS my teaching style? How DO I really present things that not only cater to all learning styles, but ALSO present it in an interesting and engaging manner?

Friday, Friday, Friday!!! It's FRIDAY!!! I've officially made it to the end of the week. I can't believe it's Friday already... weird. Alright, end of excited college student ramblings about the obvious day of the week.

I'm really striving to find more reasons to get my students to actively write in their journals when they are required to do so for the class -- such as in my Welding and Fabrication class. We have the last 7 minutes of every class to do journaling. But the problem happens when students are not motivated to write anything. And that comes because the topic of journaling is disinteresting. We have tried to remedy this by asking them more engaging questions about welding in history, etc, but it's still difficult to get them to write anything.

Students in my welding and fabrication class tend towards the air of believing that I’m not here for official, professional reasons, or that I am a soft person when it comes to keeping them on track – even when it requires discipline. They could not have been more disappointed that I am not all kicks and giggles when several were docked points on their daily time cards for not doing any work in the shop for a period of time.

I am, ever so slowly but surely, starting to enjoy my time here.

I will have to say though, that one student is really turning into quite the piece of work. He bums around all class, and then when he's actually asked to do something (heaven forbid), he finds some menial, often non-existent, reason to blame his classmates. It's frustrating to say the least. I've had to solve problems through asking questions and addressing issues through different means than I would probably with other students (I say this because the other student usually will willingly go forth with the activity at hand). I suppose I could say he has a feigned disability because he pretends he doesn't know what is going on, and doesn't do anything, but on the flip side, he is always, always, always talking and always has to have the right answer to the question. In other words, he likes to be the center of attention, but when it comes down to actually doing work, he doesn't want anything to do with it. The challenge then comes in properly motivating this student to work on activities, either on his own or with others, and act appropriately when he is working with a group of other students. The rest of the class, for the most part, is doing fine in regards to working on things. He does, however, pull down one or two students into his apparent disinterest in the current activity, and this often makes things more difficult, but I do my best to take it in stride and carry on.

My 5th period class is becoming more of a challenge than I originally thought. Why? Because my students are all on completely different levels. Sure, in order to be in Welding and Fabrication as Juniors and Seniors, the students must first complete the Metals course. The real trick comes when there are students in the class who were able to pass the previous pre-req course of Metals, but are not at the level of the other students in the class. What I mean is there is a distinct dividing line in the class between the students who struggle with basic measurements. Some of the boys in my class don't even know how to use a ruler. At all. I assembled a basic lesson, with handouts, to work on measurements because HRVHS is scoring very low on the OAKS tests in measuring. Half of my class is quite advanced in math and the other half struggles through very simple problems.

It is so distinct to the point where a measuring activity took half of the class hardly 5 minutes to complete and the rest of the class over 20 minutes. The students who were left in the classroom working on their handouts the longest often gave up or simply copied each others' handouts. It's really frustrating, because I don't really know what to do about it. Even after really breaking down measuring for the students some of them still don't get it. I don't want to half to single out students for not knowing the assignments, but I don't feel right for allowing them to continue on without knowing basic measurements. Measuring is so important! Regardless of state tests.

I definitely have to commend some of my students for their dedication. One student in particular. He's at the table with the other students who don't know what is going on, but are too embarrassed to ask for help to solve things, but if I'm at the table and at a close proximity, he will mumble that he needs help on something. Once I've helped him, the other students at the table listen in, otherwise, most of them are just completely lost.

Student teaching: day two. It didn't go quite as miserable as I was afraid of - of course, I'm pretty much petrified that I completely suck at teaching, so it doesn't take much for things not to feel entirely horrible.

I found more resources for my work samples among the bookshelves and cupboards at the school today. I was also able to talk with all of my cooperating teachers about what I'm going to be working on and when. Today was an A day, so that meant working primarily with the Intro to Ag classes, of which, there are two periods. It was weird for the students, at first, to readjust to my presence, but I did not let them be afraid of me, instead I addressed them by name when working with them in the computer lab at the library on their upcoming presentations.

I spent a vast majority of my day sorting through a file full of old documents and transparencies for my record book keeping work sample. It's sorta organized now, but it's vastly confusing. Students who are working on their applications for their FFA State Degrees are immensly lost in regards to their record books. This only intimidates me more about my work sample. If it's hard for them to understand, I feel obligated to present it in an easy-to-understand manner. The problem really becomes larger when I realize this is information that I not only do not understand myself, but did not understand when I took a business class either. The basic concepts, yes, I get those, but it's the more detailed stuff - and the complex language that everything is written. Here's to ciphering the enigma that is FFA/SAE record book keeping.

I was slightly nervous about today, but, all things considered, it went fairly well. I re-introduced myself to the 5th period class of Welding and Fabrication, consisting of 15 junior and senior level boys. They were excited at my return, but surprised that I would be in charge of their class instead of Mr Schmidt. When I came to the school mid-week last week to help out with state degree paperwork, apparently, even though I was excited to be back student teaching, I wasn't very positive. Or at least, some of the students felt like they were getting a negative vibe from me. I really tried to be more cheerful, and the students noticed. I also realized that I'm much more calm about letting the students complete their own work on their own time now than I was before. However, the students are able to actually weld and work on projects already partly completed, unlike back in September when we were primarily going through safety videos and tests. I noticed more than once that the atmosphere of the classroom is different than before. Students are quite wary to approach me and instead search out Mr Schmidt, so instead, I approach them when I see they are nearing the point where they would turn in a weld, look over it with them, then approach Mr Schmidt for an agreement of my assessment. He requested I do such until I become more comfortable being in the shop, which is understandable - but I'm going to work on assessing welds better by researching it a bit as I'm out of practice.

My computer is still not set up for me. It was supposed to be ready before I left in September. In fact, all the computers in the classroom were supposed to be set up and ready for use by Homecoming - they are still not ready. This is definitely frustrating, but I have compromised by scheduling the library computer lab when my class needs it. 

Successfully made copies today, which is a plus. The obnoxious part was that a teacher came in making the harsh accusation of: "what are you doing?" as if I were a student in a room I was not supposed to be in. Instead of being sharp or sarcastic like I potentially could have, I was professional and introduced myself as the recent student teacher in the Ag program with Don Schimdt. He was still apprehensive, but I brushed it off and continued making my copies and went back to my department for further preparations for my Intro to Ag class during 4th period tomorrow.

Interacting with some of the students has been really good so far. All of the FFA officers remember me and are overjoyed at my return. Others are still a bit unsure how to approach me, but I'm working through it and engaging them in conversation. During the break I was able to print out an attendance sheet with the students pictures so that I have a refresher before seeing them in person. This has been super helpful because when I see them, I am able to address them by name - they are quite surprised, but in a good way.