Hands on learning of sorts

Hi all,  well this week had hands on learning seemed to be the them, maybe more so on my part than the students.

This week we were trying to finalize every thing for SLLC including proficiency award applications, which are a lot more complicated than what they need to be explaining why most students just don't bother with them. I had decided earlier in the week that Friday would be set aside for the Large Animal Science class to clean their side of the barn. It was appositely repulsing!  The standing agreement is that all group leaders are to arrange for their group to get together at least once a month to clean out their assigned pens, however, none of the pens have been cleaned sense Thanksgiving. A Yorkshire Gilt, Dairy heifer calf, two Dorset X ewes, and a Nubian doe ; that should be more than enough to explain the smell. Needless to say the barn manager and I had a long discussion on the health issues, human and animal, that were bound to ensue.

I wish it hadn't  but by Thursday my words had come true, the goat had had her kid and developed mastitis. Not completely but in a larger part to her unsanitary living conditions, in addition to this the calf was about to be taken from the programs care. Students just seem to have to learn the hard way. Manual labor my be one of the best teaching tools, as all the student quickly learned why the barn needs to be cleaned because, it makes the pens even harder to clean and the smell is horrendous. Additionally it allowed me to work on my classroom management, keeping all the students productive in the cleaning process. We didn't get completely done in the 45 minuet period but some of the students volunteered to come back up during their study halls and finish up.

The fallowing two periods were even more interesting having a fire drill, that the teachers didn't know about, and some of the students that were working on the farrowing crate in the shop promised they didn't cause. It was funny how quick they came out of the shop saying  "we didn't do it, the fire was last period". When we saw the main school evaluating to we knew they relay hadn't set the alarm off. Finally, we got to go back in to the school for 8th period.                      

Having two students needing to finish their proficiency award applications, we decided to have the remaining students up date their AET. while we worked on figuring out were the errors were coming from.At this time the office had sent up machinates because the new welders were on their way and work still need to be done to  the shop so Mr.Campbell had to go assist them, leaving me to work out the bugs. Relay, it would have went a lot smother with two of us looking not just the one who had never seen or filled the form out before.  I was looking at the one and talking at loud and one student did what I was saying and fixed theirs in what seemed like no time. Helpful hint pay more attention in Ag business class. The bell had rang at some point and I still couldn't fix the same errors on the application I was looking at because cells wouldn't allow us to change them. We finally, had the students leave so they didn't miss their rides. Staying after to figure out what to do but with both Mr.Campbell and I having appointments after school it was deiced that Mr.Campbell would take it home and look at it again and if need to call another teacher to see if they could give us a hand.

Lesson for the week their is no substitute for hands on learning for the teacher and the students.