Life Knowledge Lesson

This week I had the opportunity to teach my actual students.  A class filled with freshman who I will be teaching very soon.  I was excited.  I was nervous.  But, I was ready.  We have been working so hard all semester to prepare ourselves for the minute we walk into our class.  I was ready to put everything I have learned to work with students whose learning I am soon to be completely responsible for.  That being said, Thursday may have been a difficult day to do that.

I will be teaching at Athens High School, and for those of you who don't know, that is basically the North Pole of PA.  The Tuesday before Thanksgiving turned into an unexpected short day, thanks to snow, and Wednesday was canceled all together.  That was followed by their Thanksgiving break which ran through Tuesday.  When the students came back Wednesday morning everyone helped pull together the fruit sale delivery and pick up, and Friday the State Officers were scheduled to come.  If you were keeping a tally, that leaves one completely structured day in well over a weeks time, Thursday. 

I walked into first period, Introduction to Agriculture with a room full of non enthused freshman.  This class is held in a Biology classroom that belongs to the other Agriculture teacher, so many of the students made it into the room before I did, big mistake.  As a result, I began to feel rushed, so I breezed through the beginning without truly captivating the students attention.  I wanted to be sure to get to the fun group activity I had for the last half of the class, because I knew I only had a short 39 minutes to get through everything.

I had eight different behaviors of servant leaders, and instead of just lecturing about them, I wanted the students to get into groups and draw pictures to symbolize the behavior.  To do this, I had the class count off by 8's to ensure that everyone was included.  I believe that this worked well once the activity actually got started as well because some students were more into it than others, and if I would have let them pick their groups on their own, I believe that some groups would not have taken the assignment seriously.   As they worked, I walked around to each group to talk through their ideas with them and to ensure they were staying on task.

 After the groups finished I had each group present.  I originally threw this in because it made sense, but after I was in the classroom I realized it was great to get the students up speaking in front of a class.  Some were much more comfortable than others, but I had every student speak.  I think this was a great added experience to the lesson.

After each group finished, we reviewed the 8 behaviors as a class.  I then had the students write on the back of the card that was provided to them as bellwork a complete sentence explaining how they could implement these behaviors into their everyday lives to make themselves better servant leaders.  This then served as their ticket out the door.  As students finished up, I had them put the desks back how they were since I was not going to be in that classroom the following period, and that went right up until the bell.

Overall I think it was a good experience.  I wish I would not have rushed through the beginning and spent more time developing the felt need of the lesson, so that is something I will be working on.  I also plan to be in the room before students enter so that I am better able to be prepared for the lesson.

This experience left me excited to go back.  I realize I still have a lot left to learn, but I truly enjoyed teaching my students.