The Real Deal!

Well, after a three day experience in front of actual students, I can honestly say that I am so incredibly glad I am entering the field that we know as Agricultural Education.  I really enjoyed actual getting out there to put to use everything I have been learning over the past few years. 

That being said, this experience was also a great eye opener for everything that I need to keep in mind once I am actually in front of my students.

I spent my three days teaching the Animal Science class at Central Mountain High School.  I had 27 students ranging from Freshman to Seniors, and I was to spend my three days introducing the students to their rabbit unit.  That being said, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how I could make rabbits sound interesting to high school students.  I spent a day observing the class before I taught, and during that time they were working on cats.  To say the students were not enthused is by far an understatement.  I made it a challenge to myself from that point to get the students excited about what I had to teach them.

Three days is not a lot of time, my biggest struggle was deciding what to teach during those three days, knowing that half of the last day was going to be dedicated to an assessment and a learners satisfaction sheet.  I decided to start the unit off by going over the components of the rabbit industry, followed by the breeds, moving into parts of a rabbit.  From there I planned to spend the second day dedicated to genetics and the punnet square.  I was going to end up my time in the classroom going over proper care of a rabbit, a review, a quiz, and ending with my learner satisfaction sheet.

My learning process began on the first day.  I wasn't but five minutes into the class when I realized I had too much information to cover on just that one day.  I decided that it would be better to thoroughly cover the first two objectives than to rush through them just to get to the third objective.  I learned a lot from this.  First being, it is far better to be over prepared!  There will be some days that you will need that extra information, but other days you will find the kids are more intrigued and ask more questions, therefore taking more time.  With that, I learned that it is better to really dig into a topic, not merely cover the content.  So, take the time to answer those questions.  As a matter of fact, don't just answer them, put a smile on your face while you are doing it, because you are clearly doing your job.  We want to encourage students to think deeper, and that isn't something we can necessarily put a time limit on. 

It was all fine and dandy that I ran out of time on the first day, I successfully taught the students from bell to bell, but now what was I going to do?  Once I have my own classroom, I will have more time to get to all of the content when I get to it.  But with three days, I had to decide what I was going to cut out.  I think that this is something valuable to learn, because, even though I think that I will have a lot more time when I have more than three days to teach my students, the time still will fly.  For that reason, though it is better to have extra planned then not enough, it is still important to be realistic with your planning. 

My second day I planned activities to go over the punnet square.  I went in assuming that majority of the students would have no previous experience with the punnet square, and I was wrong.  I think that it was a good thing though, because the students who had previous experience were able to help the few students who had no experience.

On my final day, we covered the parts, reviewed for the quiz, and then took the quiz.  I only had 25 students on the last day, and 20 of those students passed the quiz with above an 84%.  Of the remaining 5 students, 2 received 76%, 2 earned a 64%, and 1 a 60%.  This also taught me a thing or two.  The first being that it is really hard to quiz after just two and a half days of material, especially if some of your students were out the first two days.  The review was great to get the material to those who may have missed some, but it was not enough.  I was not at the school during the students activities period or lunch or any other time that they may have had available to come talk to me about what they had missed.  This, too is something that will change once I am in a classroom of my own.

As for my satisfaction forms, all of my students were either satisfied or very satisfies, with the exception of one, who was not there the first two days, therefore relaid that they felt that there was a lot to learn in a little time.  Many of the other students thought that there would be a better result if I was able to be there for more time instead of trying to jam everything in to three days.  Overall, however, they liked the variety of activities I brought into the classroom.

I am extremely happy with how this experience went.  There were good points, great points, and things that need to be worked on.  I look forward to taking everything I have learned and putting it to practice!

One last thought to conclude my reflection on this experience:

Inquiry Based Instruction

This was definitely the most challenging lab to date, but then again, that does make sense, seeing as we are nearing the end of the semester!  When I began to think about where to even begin planning, I did not know where to start.  We were first given the rubric that showed the five features and the amount of Learner Self-Direction.  The five features of IBI include: Engagement, Evidence, Explanation, Connection, and Communication. Having the rubric in my hands caused me to see where I was trying to go, but I was still unsure of how to get there. 

The next step in the learning process was taking a field trip to see IBI in action.  I really liked visiting Greenwood to see how Mr. Clark included IBI in his classroom.  The key element to making this trip beneficial, however, was bringing Mr. Clark in for further explanation and questioning the following Friday.  While being in the classroom was nice, there was not much time for Mr. Clark to dedicate to us, seeing as he had students that needed to take precedence.

After all of the instruction, it was time to put the knowledge I had learned to use.  I by no means expected to rock out a perfect lesson with a perfect result.  I knew that this experience was really going to provide a (hopefully) fairly large learning curve.  I had a hard time planning for the lab because I struggled to know just how much I should leave for the students to figure out on their own.  I chose to teach essential nutrients in feed concentrates by providing three feed samples and testing solutions for protein, starch, and sugars.  My intent was to have each group test each feed for all three nutrients.  I then figured we could have the students report their findings, and each group could compare to see what results they got and if they were different.  I then wanted them to ask themselves why different groups got different answers.  I was wrong. 

From this, I learned a few things.  The main thing being that IBI is something that requires a LOT of planning.   There is no telling which direction the students may take the lesson, so you need to be prepared for all of those directions.  Questions also need to be formulated before hand.  It is much easier to get students where you want them to be by asking them questions, if the questions are worked through and developed ahead of time.

If I could do this lab over, I would change a few things.

1. I would try to think of a better interest approach than just using an article.  I really like the idea of bringing literacy into the lesson, however, I believe that we all used this technique because it was shown to us, and I would have liked to try something a little different.  
2. I would better prepare my questions ahead of time.  I believe I stammered around a lot while I was trying to get the students to develop the question.
3. Have more test tubes out on the table so students were encouraged to take them and run more than one test.

I definitely have a lot of room for growth, especially with IBI, but I am very glad that I have had this experience so that I feel more comfortable to try this in an actual classroom setting.