The Teac{HERR} Way - Invest so they can be their best

The National FFA Organization publishes some pretty neat lessons related to personal growth, premier leadership, and career success, commonly referred to as "LifeKnowledge." For the last of our formal contextual lab experiences, we have an assignment to choose a LifeKnowledge lesson and teach it to one of the classes at our cooperating school.

I packed up my car and headed eastbound to Mustang Country to teach the 8th Grade Exploratory Agriculture class a lesson on defining personal growth. So like always, I'll share my Gems (the good stuff), Opps (areas where I need to work on) and my Targets (my goals for next time).

Gems -

• Adaptability and Flexibility. I'd argue I'm getting fairly decent practice in this area recently. Proving also the value of knowing your plans for the day so that you are comfortable enough to go where ever the wind takes you. Timing and diverse learners required me to adjust a few things today, but as I shared before "keep calm and pretend its on the lesson plan."
• Ya' Follow. I have this strategy that I like to use, essentially asking for motions to show that you're done. So "thumbs up if you got me" or "I'll know you're finished when you put your hands on your head." I am not afraid of making myself and my students look kind of goofy with this strategy, but it's so much more fun with 8th graders! They get all squirmy and stuff because they don't want to look weird, I love it!
• Depth. This lesson was about personal growth, so I may have not stretched my students capability to reach new levels in scientific concepts or philosophy or mechanical engineering, but I had the opportunity to influence 20 8th grade students to become the best version of them they can be. Of course, I capitalized the opportunity to bring my friend, Kid President, along which naturally made for an even better Monday.

Opps- 

• Timing. I am confident that some day I will be able figure out this timing thing. Right? Thankfully I was sure enough in my lesson content that I was able to adapt and change due to the minutes that were flying by. I look forward to more practice that will help me gauge how long students need to perform activities and assignments.
• Diverse Learners. I am fairly certain that this lesson was the first time I taught in a classroom with such a wide range of diverse learners; learners who struggled to communicate verbally, learners who needed the assistance of an classroom aide, learners who socially could not accept norms. I would argue there could never be enough training for this, but today was a very eye-opening experience
• Communicating With Every Student. This kind of ties in with this whole diverse learners situation. I want to create a classroom culture where everyone feels that their voice can and should be heard. I don't want to "avoid" students because they fall under a category of diverse learners. This certainly will be easier to do when I am in a more consistent classroom and have an opportunity to really invest into my students.

Targets - 

• Classroom Management. A lofty goal, it seems, but the more confident I become with my abilities to deliver content, the more I know I need to continue to read up, observe and develop better classroom management skills so that I can better serve the needs of my students and create a productive learning environment for all.
• Teach to the Modalities. I was pleased with my ability to incorporate variability into my lessons on a regular basis, this lesson included but even still I want to make sure my various learning activities in my lesson are reaching the needs of my audio, visual AND kinesthetic learners.

Simply put, I'll leave you with the same power message I let my students, said by my man Kid President... "a poem: two roads diverged in the woods and I took the one less traveled. It hurt man! Really bad! Rocks! Thorns! Glass! Not cool Robert Frost!" When we're working to make ourselves better, sometimes it means taking the road less traveled, don't be afraid of it - it's worth it!

Simply put, these were good kids and Midd-West is a great school. I am so fortunate to get to spend 15 weeks investing in those students and learning from Mr. Bittner and Mr. Erb. Bring it on!

Until Next Time, K. Janae