The Teac{HERR} Way - Catch You on the Flip Side Lab!

And that's all she wrote.

No, no, no! This is not my last blog! Nice try though! I say that because, this is the last of many contextual lab reflection posts. In case you were wondering, time really does fly when you're having fun. It also flies when your to-do lists are miles long, when your calendar is full and when your a senior. Here were are ready to embark in the last week of the fall semester, a month or so away from our student teaching internship, how crazy?!

Today I'm taking some time to look back on my contextual lab experiences. So, in true fashion, I will reflect like normal. I'll share my Gems (the good stuff), Opps (the okay stuff) and my Targets (what I'm striving for).

Gems - 

• Purposeful. Everything about the design and structure of this contextual lab course is incredibly purposeful and designed to help complete our teacher preparation experience to the best of its ability. I am thankful for the instructional team and their intentionality to do so. For example, what better way to kick off a semester then to assign a lab assignment for day three on day one? Immersion by fire? A little bit. 
• Application. Lab is very much so designed to create situations that can be directly applied to our student teaching internship and beyond. The lesson plans that are written for lab experiences are encouraged to be some of the same that will be turned in for our final presentation and be used at my cooperating center in the spring.
• Delivery. I can leave this semester and this contextual lab, confident that I have experienced growth in my ability to deliver content to my students. Lab has allowed me to "practice" in low-stakes environments, to develop and refine and learn from my peers. Of course, growth also occurred in other areas, but in my case, I believe lab accomplished its purpose.

Opps - 

• Classroom Management. As per the syllabus, the contextual lab experience is to be supplemented with classroom management role-playing. The few lab days that we did the role playing, was a great experience and allows for constructive feedback and reflection. I wish; however, that this would have been implemented more heavily. The addition of the role playing really rounds out the "real-life"experience.
• Feedback. The constructive feedback from my instructors and my peers is incredibly valuable to me; it is what makes me better. I strive to always provide my peers with the same level of feedback that I would want them to provide me. I wish that the lab would be designed to incorporate some type of coaching or training that would help students have a better understanding of how to give, and receive, constructive feedback. Using the same rubric for all labs would also help increase the consistently of feedback.

Targets - 

• Reflective Practitioner. The instructional team I have the privilege of working under is incredibly intentional about developing my peers and I into reflective practitioners, so that we can continually be growing and developing into the best agricultural educators. Though at the time, they were not ideal, I am thankful for blogs, rubrics and learner satisfaction forms. All of which played a role in helping me develop into a reflective practitioner, a skill I plan to maintain throughout my professional career. 
• BECOV. Be who?! BECOV, you know, like Rosenshine and Furst essential qualities of an effective teacher. B - Business-Like/Task-Oriented, E - Enthusiastic, C - Clarity, O - Opportunity to Learn, V - Variability. The contextual lab experience works hard to develop all of these in #psuaged16. Below, you can watch my lab reflection video that features my employment of clarity of instruction and directions, an area I feel that I grew and excelled at. I want to keep working to better in the area of Business-Like/Task-Oriented and Opportunity to Learn during my student teaching internship.

Simply put, lab has been a stretching experience, one that surely made my teacher preparation program complete.

Simply put, how is it really the end of my last fall semester in college?! But seriously, time does fly. Don't blink.

Until Next Time, K. Janae 

K. Janae's High Five - The Classroom Will Come to Order

If there is anything that the more then capable instructional team at Penn State may not be able to teach us and prepare us for before we move to the other side of the desk and that, my friends, is classroom management.

We role play different types of students during our contextual lab experiences and we have the opportunity to experience a real classroom, before our student teaching internship, during our micro-teaching experience. These experiences are purposefully placed to help prepare us for the time we will spend with our first very own students during student teaching; however, a lot of our "preparation" comes from readings and conversations with seasoned educators. Appropriately enough, here is a high five, classroom management edition.

1. Start Out Firm

• Lay down the law people! You cannot expect students to rise to higher standards after they have been able to get by with lower standards; standards that have become the norm. We talk about the first day of school and how unbelievably crucial that first day is for laying the way for your classroom expectations, procedures and consequences. I have to be incredibly confident in them and prepared to hold my students to them.

2. Routine at the beginning of class

• What are your students doing the minute they walk in the door? Do you have a routine that requires them to find their seats, acquire materials and perform an activity that gets their minds warmed up and ready to jump in with that days task? Or do you allow them to enter, socialize with their peers and create an unsafe environment? My classroom procedures require my students to enter the room, prepared to be engaged, active and productive participants and then to complete the bellwork I assign for them for that day.

3. Make generous use of praise

• We talk frequently about cultivating a growth mindset over a fixed mindset in our students (read more here). I believe that when my students are struggling with a fixed mindset the more apt they are to struggle with misbehaving or get frustrated in my class. If I am working to build my students up, continually calling them to keep striving to be the best version of them, my classroom culture and student behavior will surely be more positive.

4. Be consistent, yet not predictable

• Again, for the sake of not sounding too repetitive, starting out firm, holding true to the expectations and procedures that were set at the beginning of the class with provide students with the necessary structure for a positive learning environment. But in the same sense, it can be easy to get stuck in the routine. As a teacher, I need to watch for areas where my students are becoming "lax" with my classroom routine or are trying to work the system and continually remind my students that we are held at a higher standard. 

5. Never make threats, only promises

• Our schools create consequences for a reason. If I state that after one verbal warning, the student has to have a one-on-one meeting with me after class, then that is how it should go. I cannot, out of frustration or annoyance, threaten my student that immediately after another offense they will have to leave the room if that is not what I have outlined and set precedence for in my classroom consequences. I owe it to my students to be fair. 

Simply put, classroom management can certainly be more successful with more intentional creation of a classroom culture. I want my students to know that I may hold them to a high expectation, but that is because I know they are more then capable. 

Simply put, I believe in a classroom of second chances. Everybody gets a free pass for bad days! Each one of my students is a walking story that I may only know bits and pieces of. Off days happen, and that's okay. 

Here's a High Five from Me to You, K. Janae

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

The Teac{HERR} Way - Real Deal, Real Life, Real Close

I share with you almost every week about my experiences in my contextual teaching lab. These lab assignments are fairly low-stakes, I teach to four of my peers and one of my professors. As our lab assignments progress, things get a little more intense. We teach for longer periods of time, we implement role-playing to practice classroom management skills and performance expectations get higher. Our "capstone" lab, if you will, is our micro-teaching experience.

Micro-teaching is a three-day lab assignment, where I am placed at a local high school and teach a class period a day to their agriculture students. I had the pleasure to work alongside two of my peers at the Central Pennsylvania Institute (CPI), which is a career and technical center, who's agriculture program is focused on Horticulture and Landscape Management. I taught three lessons on asexual plant reproduction and plant propagation.

And yes, you are correct. I got to teach some real-life kiddos this week. And yes, you are still correct. I still am so very excited to have my own agriculture classroom.

That hype aside, 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- 

• Check for Understanding. I've been working to be very intentional in this area. Whether it is distinctively pausing the learning to see where we've been and where we're going or if it's using it as a tool to help rein the students back in or to call them to a higher level of thinking, I've found this to be a very powerful tool, that I pride myself in working hard to master.
• Effective Questioning. Again, this is another area that I want to excel in. I want my students to confidently answer questions, but in the same vein, not be afraid to ask them and actively seek responses. 
• Preparation. I was super thankful that I spent some extra hours to prepare all my needed materials for all three days of teaching the day before I started. Interestingly enough, crazy things happened and I ended up not needing a lot of them; however, because of that preparation, I was able to be much more adaptable and flexible when the need arose.

Opps- 

• Technology. It will fail. Time and time again. I know now the importance of test runs on my technology. I wanted to use this week formative assessment tool called ExitTicket to evaluate my students learning throughout the three days I was there. Well, slow internet, different versions of phones and a pile of other things, made this technology usage quite challenging. 
• Timing. The nature of my micro-teaching placement made designing "class periods" a little difficult for my peers and I. I struggled to plan well for the 50 minutes I was allotted. On the bright side, I had plenty of content that I still could have covered, which is surely better then being short, I need to continue to work at judging the amount of content I have, the abilities of my students and the minutes I have in a class so that I can better serve my students. 
• Higher Order. Though I felt good about my ability to ask effective questions during this three day early field experience, I was challenged to keep seeking out questions that call my students to a higher level of thinking. This too, will come with practice. But it will also come with more familiarity with the content that I am teaching. 

Targets- 

• Adapt and Overcome. This should probably be the anthem of my micro-teaching experience.
  Flexibility my friends! It's a teachers key to success! (That and lots of coffee) There was a serious of somewhat-but-really-not-that unfortunate events that came to my peers and I during these past few days. Power outages, technology failures and mandatory assemblies just to name a few. But sometimes, all you can do is roll with the punches - adapt and overcome.
• Teach to the Modalities. I was pleased with my ability to incorporate variability into my lessons this week, 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.
• Lifetime of Learning. Here's the thing, I will never know it all. My knowledge of agricultural topics may only always be an inch deep and a mile wide. But the important part is that I devote myself to a lifetime of learning. I need to constantly be seeking professional development, current events, emerging technology and the list goes on and on. I want to stay relevant so that my students can stay relevant.

Simply put, I am super thankful for a program that makes this early field experience part of our course work. I learned some really valuable lessons, but even more so, I left refueled, ready to knock out these last 30 days (holy cow!) until the big final presentations.

Simply put, I just really like high school agriculture students. They really are the coolest. 

Until next time, K. Janae

The Teac{HERR} Way - Explore, Create, Discover

You may have been keeping up with K. Janae's High Fives lately, and if not, don't stress! Here's the latest. In that blog post, I stressed the importance of this desire I have to create a culture of curiosity in my classroom. I want my students to feel like they have the ability to create, discover and own their learning. 

Our contextual lab for this week helped me develop the skills to do just that. We dove into Inquiry-Based Instruction this week, and as 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). My targets for this lab were to Teach for the Modalities and Direction Follow-Ups. I'm sensing growth in some areas, but am fully aware that I've still got plenty of work to do.

 Gems - 

• Discovery Sheets. In efforts to help ease the process and be sure that each step of the inquiry process (question, evidence, explanation, connection, communication) was completed. I gave them pieces of what would then become their "discovery packets" as we continued throughout the class. This help guide and organize thoughts, and though we didn't get to the last step of communication in the lab, this packet will play a pivotal role in helping students share their findings.
• Literacy Connection. I didn't even plan this part! I paused the learning process at one point to talk through and review some key points and connect vocabulary to what we were doing that day. This led to continual opportunities for check-points, where I paused the learning and created 'marbling' as our word of the day. I also used effective questioning to help establish this cross-curricular connections. 
• Student-Led. I felt fairly good about my ability to allow my students to create their own question for the day. I was able to give them complete power to explore as the "experimenters" that day. Quite honestly, I had the fun part, I got to sit-back and watch and listen as they made observations and discovered differences in fat content in meat.

Opps -

• Student Frustration. This instructional method is so student-led, I become simply a facilitator. I need to be cautious not to rush my students in the process, but to help by asking guiding questions. I don't want my students to become frustrated or unmotivated in the process, I want them to be empowered to feel as though their learning is their own!
• Scientific Content. Inquiry-Based Instruction is built upon the scientific method. Though I had my students create a hypothesis and record data, I didn't follow through in my content with some "scientific" connections. If I was doing this particular lesson again, I'd want to utilize some of those check-points to talk about chemical changes that are occurring or the structure of lipids/fats.
• Felt Need. I want to be continually asking myself if I am truly being purposeful with my activities in my lessons. Looking back, I should have spent more time revisiting the responses the students shared on the board before we dove into creating a hypothesis and helping them understand the power they have as "experimenters" and connecting what was learned earlier in the unit to this discovery day.

Targets - 

• Learning Check-Points. As I practice Problem-Based or Inquiry-Based Instruction, the more I realize that there can be some power in freezing the process to connect where we've been, where we are and where we're going. It's a tool that I hope to continually implement in my classroom. 
• Higher-Level Thinking. Inquiry-Based Instruction takes patient conditioning of my students to be comfortable and aware of the process. However, I think that this method is a great way to enhance and develop critical thinking and creativity in my students and push them to make cross-curricular connections and think a higher level.
• With Purpose.This has been a target a few times for me in this contextual lab experience, but it's something that I want to continually work at. Am I being purposeful in my planning? My students absolutely deserve it!

Simply put, this lab was different then others, a little trickier too. But I am confident in my desire to create a classroom environment where my students are conditioned to discover and explore. 

Simply put, I am excited to play a role in the uncovering of student's passions through teaching methods like Inquiry-Based Instruction. 

Until next time, K. Janae

K. Janae's High Five - Cultivating a Culture of Curiosity

I long for my classroom to be a place of discovery. 

Discovering career opportunities, passions, relationships, abilities, leadership, potential. 

As teachers, we ideally want to be engaging. We want our students to want to be in our class - what if our class is the only reason that our students even come to school?! A fantastic way to add variability to the classroom is through inquiry-based instruction.

One of my favorite definitions of inquiry-based instruction is this one... 

Three cheers for student-centered learning environments!

There are five steps to the inquiry process. Hence, this week's High Five: Learning Through Inquiry.

1. Question
1. This is like the signal word of a direction set. This is the question that gets the gears grinding, that triggers the thoughts and explodes into exploration. So for example, students walk into the room and see two soybean plant samples. Why does sample A seem to be growing faster then sample B?
2. Investigate
1. Now we put our detective hats on. We get out the magnifying glasses, the yellow steno notebooks and trench coats. Using some previous knowledge, students run tests, monitor field and growth conditions and keep track of results.  
3. Use Evidence to Describe, Explain & Predict
1. Now, a few days later, like true researchers students will dig deeper and evaluate the data they have collected. They will rule out collected information that does not lead them closer to a solution and use other information to predict other causes
4. PLOT TWIST! 
1. In a really successful inquiry-based learning environment, steps 2 and 3 would keep happening until students reach a more solidified solution.
5. Connect Evidence to Knowledge
1. And this is where all the magic comes together! It's the ah-ha moment, where students discovery and curiosity leads them to a solution as to why plant sample A was growing faster then sample B.
6. Share Findings
1. This has been a learning process. It's important to share and celebrate what your students have discovered, uncovered and created. It's also crucial to reflect on the learning process. Do your students understand why they explored the difference in growth in the soybean plants? What new skills and knowledge did they gain from this experience?

**NOTE: The teacher did nothing throughout those five steps. The process happens because students are performing each of those steps. The teacher prepares the initial question, and follows students throughout the process asking guiding questions like "how do you know that?" "can you tell me more?" or "but WHY do you think that?"

Here's another cool resource that I thought tied nicely into the inquiry process!

Simply put, my students will be the ones that solve world hunger, cure cancer, preserve natural resources. I have to cultivate a culture of curiosity in my classroom. 

Simply put, I want my students to be life-long learners. I mean they have to be if their going to save up natural resources, produce a cure for cancer and feed the world! I want to use inquiry-based instruction so I can teach my students to learn to learn - a skill that will last them a lifetime!

Here's a High Five from Me to You, K. Janae

#TeachAgChat the Teac{HERR} Way!

We're all about this cool thing called PLN's here with #psuaged16. And by PLN I mean Professional Learning Network. As future educators, who are we to stop learning?! We owe it to our students to stay relevant, stay engaged  and stay improving.

I do not think it is coincidental that this infographic here also includes the importance of talking to "thought leaders" directly through various social media platforms like Twitter and that we are asked to lead a weekly twitter chat as a cohort on a topic that interests us.

I count myself privileged to have gotten to rock out the latest #TeachAgChat with my peers Jenna Timmons (@jitimmons) and Olivia Murphy-Sweet (@OSweetMurph). We discussed the "opportunities and challenges with technology regarding school based agriculture education."

For a first time twitter chat host, I was quite pleased with our results. We had 39 participants, 469 tweets and 306, 837 impressions.

I loved watching our guests enthusiastically discuss some awesome resources, explore unique ways to implement technology in the classroom and connect tech to 21st Century Skills. You can catch a glimpse at the questions we asked here.

To see some of the highlights from our #TeachAgChat, you can view our storify here.

Looking forward, here's a few thoughts for my peers, the future hosts of the #TeachAgChat...

• Think carefully about the timing of your questions. I would argue that we had too many questions, I think it was hard for participants to follow along because it was moving so quickly and they were having some great dialogue about previous questions.
• Actively engage with participants. Greet them as soon as the log in, comment, provide feedback and further resources, "call them out," ask follow up questions and thank them for their time. 
• Introduce your experts so that participants know who they are. Ask them to bring their own resources and let them provide follow up and clarification to questions. We had some super knowledgable and passionate individuals, maximize their expertise!
• Advertise your chat on like-type twitter chats. Since our topic was very centered around educational technology, we should have been advertising our #TeachAgChat on similar twitter conversations like #edchat, #edtechchat, etc. This way would could have conversed with experts outside of the agriculture education field. 

Join in on Thursday, November 5th at 8pm EST to chat about "integrating place-based environmental education in school-based agricultural education to improve environmental literacy." 

Simply put, twitter chats are pretty sweet way to expand your professional learning community, to become refueled and excited about the future of agriculture education.

Simply put, I'm thankful for innovative instructors who push us outside of our comfort zones for the sake of our professional well-being.

Catch you on the next #TeachAgChat, K. Janae

K. Janae's High Five - How do we know they got it?

You plan, plan, plan. You create this engaging lessons and design sweet supplemental materials and labs. You call guest speakers, show video clips, get your hands dirty. But how do you know they got it?! We assess. We write multiple choice questions and draft task sheets. We count participation points and mark-up public speaking manuscripts. 

I knocked out a High Five this week with Five Ways to Assess students. Five ways to ensure that they're getting it.

1. Check for Understanding

• Formative Assessment - let's hit the pause button here for a hot second and make sure everyone's on the same page. Because I am doing me student teaching at a school that is one-to-one I am interested in ways to check for understanding digitally. I love this infographic and its digital (and non-digital) formative assessment recommendations.

2. Student Portfolios

• In agriculture education, we have the privilege of teaching in uniquely designed classrooms. Someday's it is a room with four walls and desks, somedays its a chemistry lab, a greenhouse, a field, an agribusiness, a welding shop, you get the point. What about assessing students experiential learning through the format of student portfolios. Not only does this allow students to see how far they come in a marking period or semester, but also provides them with a compilation of projects to show their skills to a future employer. Application, application, application!

3. Peer-Assessment

• Let's create a classroom culture where our students feel comfortable giving and receiving constructive criticism from their peers. I want my classroom to be an environment of respect where my students constantly work to build each other up and make each other next time. I think peer-assessment can be more effective than shared rubrics. What if we used our strong students to help coach weaker students? 

4. Self-Assessment

• Reflection. Growth Mindset. How well did I do? What will make me better for next time? Who said the teacher was the only one who had to do the evaluating of students work? Self-assessment can be a powerful tool to give students ownership of their own progress. Here's some great questions to guide students to high levels of thinking in self-assessment and reflection.

5. Backwards Design. 

• In efforts to make assessments most meaningful and effective, it's important to include them in key parts of backwards design planning. This video talks about assessment done in ways to develop rigor in students, but makes a really awesome point about asking "how will I know?" So how will I know everything for my summative unit assessment? 

• Major Assessments > Intermediate Assessments or Check-Ins > Activities

Simply put, as educators let's ask ourselves, are our assessments authentic? Are the tests, projects and presentations really telling us if our students "got it"?

Simply put, I don't want to assess my students just to assess. I'm not about teaching to the test. I'm about teaching to create connections and dig deeper.

Here's a High Five from Me to You, K. Janae