Time Flies. Good news, you're the pilot.

Time surely does fly, here we are less then a hundred days away from graduation, a quarter of the way through the semester and I'm pretty sure just yesterday I was setting up my desk. This week basically looked like this... It's barely 9 in the morning and my desk is already covered in papers, small dogs running across the floor, transplanting pansies, influx of strawberry and spring flower order sales, FFA committee meetings, acquiring two new sections of a class and a winter pep rally. It is so crazy to think that we've made a quarter of the way through this experience!

With week four in the books, I'll be sharing a high (some of the top notch, #thebestofmiddwest and other dynamite moments), a low (the not so glorious, wish it couldn't been better or those "you'll have that" kind of moments) and a tip (something of the Teac{HERR} Way that I learned or heard that should be shared with #psuaged16 and friends).

A week for growth in the greenhouse
& growth in my students!

High: As I get further into this experience I am able to witness continued growth in my students. Not only to I get to witness progress on various projects and get excited about upcoming opportunities. I so loved watching one of my students put on his FFA jacket for the first time this week, helping prepare anxious prepared public speaking competitors and watch some aspiring welders daily improve. This job is hard, but oh so very rewarding.

The student "certifier" system at work in
Mr. Bittner's Forestry Class

Low: Differentiation is hard. Especially in a lab setting. This week has been a stretching one; the further we get into lab assignments the more diversified my student needs become. I would argue my biggest challenge this week has been discovering ways to master managing a classroom and lab setting where my students are working in different areas in the classroom, making varied levels of progress on their assignments and ensuring that the learning environment is safe and influential for all students. As I sought out strategies to better improve in this area, my cooperating teacher suggested a student "certifier" system, asking higher performing or more advanced students to teach and/or evaluate their peers through the learning process. Looking forward to week five, I'm hoping to implement this strategy in both my Introduction to Welding and Small Gas Engines classes.

Tip: Teac{HERR} Observation 34,756: Students are actually not digital natives. Despite assumptions on this generations abilities, we cannot hand them a laptop and expect them to know how to operate it efficiently. In fact, during my time student teaching at school that is one-to-one with student technology, more often then not my students don't know how to use various tool on their device and/or they are tired of using them, almost as if they crave paper and pencil. Schools that move forward to establish a technologically advanced infrastructure have to provide their students and teachers with the training and assistance that they need to operate their machines so that it can be used as a learning tool, not simply a note-taking, email-sending, expensive mix of plastic and motherboards. My cooperating teacher and I have daily witnessed this challenge as we seek to discover collaborative and innovative working spaces that utilize these devices for more then the sake of classroom routine and word processing. I'll keep you posted on what I continue to observe here as the weeks progress.

Simply put, there is this existing love-hate relationship with technology. It holds the key to so much potential to enhance learning in the classroom; however, only if both the teacher and student have been provided with the training and support to do so effectively and efficiently. 

Simply put, I so love the daily challenge that this experience presents for me. It is exhausting, but the most rewarding type of exhaustion I have ever experienced. I daily thank the Lord for carrying me here, carrying me through. I am so blessed by this journey.

Until Next Week, K. Janae