“Since she’s going to be a teacher she has to know EVERYTHING”

 Week 2 is coming to a close and looking back a lot of interesting things happened. We said good bye to our current 7^th and 8^th grade semester students and welcomed in 2 new sections of 7^th graders and 2 new sections of 8^th graders. Just when I thought I was beginning to learn the names of the other students I have to learn a whole new batch now.  So far so good learning names but I am nowhere near a pro yet.

On Sunday into Monday I learned the value of saving your work in multiple places and saving it frequently. Being the genius that I am I left my power chord for my laptop at my house and while working on things for the next day my laptop DIED! Yeah it died, after I had a panic freak out for a few minutes and I prayed that what I saved was still on my flash drive, I begin thinking about what I could to adapt to make sure I had something to do with the students the next day.

I decided to do an activity that I was going to do on Tuesday. It went okay but I thought that it would have been a lot better had I had done it the last day of the marking period. However, on the other hand when I finally got to do the intended lesson for Monday I got some really awesome reactions.

Would you ever eat an insect? That is the question that my 8^th graders were posed with on Tuesday. They all assured me that they would never ever eat one…but they were wrong! I had them thinking that I was going to bring in real insects for them to eat (I tried so hard to find some for them!) but could only find gummy worms. We discussed the different insect delicacies from around the world. The students were really interested, grossed out, and worried that I was really going to give them an insect to eat. The sighs of relief from the students when they say the gummy worms was very comical. I also explained to the students that although gummy worms are not “real” insects, they are still made with insect products like bees wax and red dye. Let’s just say I am pretty sure some students will never eat gummy worms ever again! Although my flub was not intended or planned, it worked out because I think the 8^th graders has a really fun last day in their semester agriculture class! Yes, things had to get shuffled around a little bit I learned how I am going to change things for next time such as creating a web quest for the students go learn about the different countries that consume insects and hopefully having some real insects for them to eat!

Onto the 8^th Grade AFNR course, these guys are the year longers. This past week I have been observing Dr. McLean during one AFNR period, I take notes and see how the activity works and then I teach it the next period. This week we talked about classification and dichotomous keys. To learn about classification we discussed how animals are classified. We learned that a “Queen” is a female cat and that students really feel like they are going to get into trouble when they use the term designated to a female of the canine family (dogs, wolves, foxes, etc.) During that lesson the students had so much fun and laughed so much, I am pretty sure one of them starting crying! We also did classification examples with shoes and candy. During this course a comment was made by a student about how I knew all the terms for the specific animals and they asked if I had a cheat sheet. I did have one but I explained that I learned all of this during my college animal science course. After having said this, another student said “yeah don’t you know since she’s going to be a teacher she has to know everything.”

This made me think just how much information teachers actually do have to know and that students really do look up to you and some actually believe that you do know everything. It also scared me a tiny bit because as a teacher you are responsible for their minds to grow and change, you really have to make sure you know your facts before you tell them something wrong. I knew about that before but when I heard that student say that it really put it into perspective for me.

Classification practice with shoes!!

One thing that I know I need to work on with all of my classes is classroom management. This is something that I have struggled with and one of the skills that I really hope I can continue to improve on. I know that I will not know how to do it right off the bat but it is something that I know that I need to be strong in because there are going to be different situations and things that arise when I will have to use them. Each time I teach I try to improve a little more on these skills. This week I feel that I improved most on making sure I had the class’s attention, sometimes I would just have to stop and wait for them to finish, and this seemed to work because they quickly realized I was not very happy because the topic of conversation was not class related. I still had a few hiccups here or there but I was proud that I improved a little.

Wednesday afternoon I helped FFA make their posters for National FFA Week. I had a lot of fun talking with and getting to know some of the students that I have in class. After I shared some of my experiences with them one of the students turns around in his seat, looked at me and said "Wow Ms. Rigg, you really fit in here well. A lot better than I thought you would." I was flattered and thought it was funny because I think most of them did not know I had as much agriculture experience as I shared with them. They also seem really excited that I will be getting to help them with the Horticulture Expo and Spring CDEs too! 

The rest of the week was about getting to know the incoming 7^th and 8^th graders. They seem like they are going to be 4 really unique, different, and fun classes to work with. In my second 7^th grade period of the day I do have 2 life skills students. They are the sweetest girls in the world; they are always smiling and saying hi to everyone. I think that the challenge with having them in my class will mostly come from the accommodation work that will be needed for them. Both need work that is of a 2^nd or 3^rd grade level, the challenge will come in with trying to find that level work that actually relates to the topic we are learning about, however since there are so many resources available to teachers today I think I will be able to fulfill that for them. I am going to the "Art of Environmental Education" workshop at Shaver's Creek this Saturday. This workshop is going to be geared more towards elementary level students, I am really hoping I can find some cool things for these 2 girls to do while I am there!

To end out the week we were in the computer labs learning about how to use edmodo in the classroom and of course we had to talk about the Super Bowl and its relation to agriculture!! All the classes seemed to enjoy the presentation and were really shocked at how much the agriculture the Super Bowl has in it.

Side Note: Footballs are made from cow hides but the air pocket in the football was originally made from a pig’s bladder and they would inflate that to hold the air! Pretty cool!

Finally…probably the funniest thing that happened this week was when one of my new 8^th grade students was trying to sneak into class without anyone noticing him because he was late. This particular student was pretending he was a “ninja”…yes I said ninja you did read that right, and was slow motion tip toeing and James Bonding it into the computer lab to get to his seat. When we asked him what he was doing he looked at us and said “you didn’t see me come in late because I have awesome ninja skills.” I tried to hold it together but the fact that he was dead serious with his answer made it even funnier. I think that the class that he is in is going to be a very interesting one but I am excited to start teaching them soon especially since they are really really excited about my community based unit of instruction that I have shared with them (don’t worry you will get to read more about that in another post we are still trying to finalize dates right now but I am excited to start moving the process forward!)

I am getting excited for week 3 as I take on the 7^th graders solo. Monday we will be learning about what agriculture really is and how it is important to all of us.  Thanks for reading! :) 

Inspirational Quote of the Week: