While this week was full of events, including our area "Leadership" CDE event. I am very excited to reported that Derry had the most participants (26 freshman, sophomores, juniors, seniors), taking home the most First (Small Gas Engine, Prepared, Jr., Conservation, and extemporaneous speaking, along with creed), Seconds (Jr. and Prepared public speaking, and Job Interview), & Thirds (Prepared Public speaking and Small Gas Engine). However, the proudest moment for me was waiting for the Job Interview result and one of my Freshmen said " I don't care where I place , I'm just happy I work hard on my resume and cover letter and you talked me into coming." Oh, the things that students say that make you Happy to be an Ag Teacher!
Additionally, this week the weather finally broke for a three day period, allowing my to try out some placed based education with my PA Environmental and Ecology class. a wise man once told me " the best way to get students to learn is to take them 'outside' where its happening", Thank You George. Armed with our bird call boxes and silhouette cards the two groups (27 students) of students successfully identified over 20 different PA birds. Having the two groups allowed my to try out a co-teaching approach, and than came the rain so, we started constructing our community based project "Bring on the Bat Boxes".
This week I also started into the one class I had dreaded the most, Ag Construction. To my surprise (knock on wood, fingers crossed, and through spieled salt) they have been fairly well behaved and engaged. Each group of three is framing out an 1":16" scale building. Currently we are working on laying our sub flooring. The humor of me in the shop and allowing the students to double check and correct my work seems to be a great insensitive for the class.In Animal Science the nice weather brought more discipline problem than I thought possible. All the students quickly figured out that the more they pushed the more numbers that dispersed on the consequences list between them and detention.Some students so much that according to my Cop teacher I earned my A, as I finally had a student call me .......... while it wasn't very nice or appropriate and we'll just leave it at that.
Out of all my weeks these was by far the best. I still have a lot to learn but what tool I do have are starting to come together. Looking forward to the upcoming week , AIing our play dough heifers with pixie stick seaman.
Till next time!
