Banquet Time

When I was in high school, one of my favorite FFA events all year was our FFA Banquet. We would spend two weeks practicing our parts and getting them right. Between the delicious food, the gathering of familiar faces, and the excitement of awards, it's hard to not miss those exciting times.

Boys and their arrangements!!!

Well, this week I got to experience my first banquet as an Advisor. And OH MY, it was a busy week.

One of our arrangements

This week in class, Mr. Boyer took over to cover some basics in floriculture. We both worked with the students as he taught them them basics of putting together our beautiful arrangements and some of the different styles of arrangements that you could find at a flower shop. While it was very hectic at times putting everything together, the students had a lot of fun doing it, and
they turned out some great arrangements.

In shop, I also got to observe, as Mr. Heyler took over to cover some of the more intricate details of building construction, and now, the students are full steam ahead for designing and beginning the building process of their mini-barns (20x30 inches to be exact). It pretty crazy, but, I think I am more excited to see the finished products than they are.

But, back to the hectic week. It seemed like Monday-Thursday rolled by, everyday at lunch time the officers would come down to the ag room, and practice their opening and closing ceremonies, and would try and to memorize and perfect it as much as possible.

When Thursday night did finally roll around, all those old feelings started coming right back. The delicious meal, gathering of the families and students, and an excitement for the upcoming award ceremony. And hats off to the officers they did a great job with their opening ceremonies.

Officers during opening ceremonies

The rest of the program went off without a hitch!!! They even surprised me, by giving me my own honorary chapter degree, and they gave me a personalized wooden name tag to put at the front of the room. But that evening wasn't about me, it was about the incredible students and how awesome they did.

Now that the excitement of Banquet is over, its time to move on to the excitement of SLLC, and the excitement of me going back to full time teaching next week. Here we come animal science!!!!!!

As you can tell, Tyler was super excited!!!

Keep on, Keeping on

Along with another week of student teaching, came a new list of challenges and accomplishments. And while sometimes I feel that the list of challenges is a lot longer than accomplishments, I know that the accomplishments I do achieve are ones in the right direction.

This week we began wrapping up our Pesticide Unit and our first leg of the building construction unit. One of my main challenges this week was trying to make the building construction lessons more hands on. The class will actually be doing some building over the course of the next 3-4 weeks. But, before the building could begin, the students have to learn some of the fundamentals of building a utility buildings, and learn common terms and ideas. So it was my task to make this information hands on while teaching them these basics.

So I began implementing questions, discussions, and even had students design their dream building, and develop qualities that they wanted in their own building. What was really cool was that a lot of the students kept their drawings, and one even told me that he wanted to keep it so that he could use it in the future to build this dream shop of his.

Next week will be a new adventure for me, as we begin preparing for banquet, get in our strawberry orders, and I will be assisting Mr. Boyer this week in teaching floriculture to both the Ag Science and Horticulture students. I'm also excited because this will be the first major activity that I will be preparing and assisting with for the FFA Chapter. The officers are already preparing for opening ceremonies, and getting ready for an exciting banquet.

Well, now it's time to get back to observations with the lovely Ms. Gordon at Ridgemont High School. I guess I just gotta keep on, keeping on!!!!

New Chapter in student teaching

The end of last week and the beginning of this week have brought on new challenges, struggles, and triumphs in the classroom.

Here are two of my students finishing a four way circuit.

Last week I wrapped up not just 1, not just 2, but 3 of my first units, and am now moving on to new subjects in each class. In Ag Mechanics we finished up our electrical unit and are now moving on to building construction. This unit is especially exciting because not only will I be teaching about carpentry and how to build utility buildings, but, we also will be making model barns in the classroom, and, will be building full size garden sheds within the next 2-3 weeks. Talk about Exciting Stuff!!!!!

In my Ag Science and Horticulture classes, we are covering Pesticide Education and Application. While my Ag Science class will be finished with this unit by the end of the week. In horticulture, we will spend another 2-3 days on the subject to get a more up close look at how to properly use pesticides and how to use an IPM (Integrated Pest Management) plan.

The Ag Science Students are ending this unit at a perfect time, so we can do 2-3 days of floriculture, and prepare centerpieces for the Cowanesque Valley FFA Banquet. The Horticulture students will be assisting with this as well, and getting some hands on experience with the Floriculture Industry.

Our Pesticide Manual we use for class!!

One of my goals last week was to make my classes more engaging, and less discussion based. I am slowly moving in the right direction, as I am utilizing more technology (powerpoint, video, internet articles), and more classroom activities and projects. For instance, last Friday, I had my  Horticulture students research 3 different insects, and find why they were considered a pest, and what were some mechanical, physical, biological, and chemical controls to help stop the pest. It was a good way of bringing together some ideas we had learned about earlier in the week, and a good segue into this weeks topics: Pesticide Uses, Applications, and Safety. One of my main problems though, is that no matter how much I switch things up, the students don't seem entertained and they are losing interest. I hope to make classes more exciting for them, so they are more interested. One way I've found that makes them perk up, is with a stronger transition.

For instance, I utilized a 3 minute video from Mythbusters last week in class that got them asking more questions (Mythbusters seems to have that affect on everyone.) and today at the end of class, I showed them what the future of pesticide application might look like, by showing them a video of a RC helicopter and an RC boat, both applying pesticides in rice fields. That got quite a few of them asking questions, and discussing what other technology we might see used in the Pesticide Industry.

For this week, I want to continue on that path, and try to make my classes more interesting for the students, while making sure that they are learning along the way.