Final Recap: All Things Student Teaching Experience

Wow, it has been a ride, with highs and lows and everything in between. I have had a lot of fun and learned a lot along the way. I am excited and nervous for the next chapter but am definitely going to miss my time at Honesdale and all of the people I have met here. 

I taught 3 classes while I was at Honesdale: Animal Science, Horticulture, and Intro to Ag. Animal Science was the first class I picked up and I was excited because this was my background. While I needed to work to brush up on my scientific terms and knowledge, I was able to gain a lot of confidence in what I knew from my past experiences. This was a 96 minute block, so some days it was a lot to plan for and other days we barely had enough time with labs, but gaining the experience in facilitating labs was one of the areas I grew the most. Coming into to student teaching I think I was obviously to how much students really need step by step directions and need to walk through these, they may even need the procedure repeated and explained several times. But I was able to grow in chunky directions and foreshadowing somewhat where they will have struggles. I enjoyed teaching animal science, but the students in the class probably pushed me the most in realizing how important setting a tone and shutting issues down early is very important. Going forward, I would love to teach an animal science class and while this may be a pipe dream I would love to teach animal science with more hands on activities and labs with livestock and even have some on site. 

The next class, I picked up was intro to ag, which I was unsure what to expect with this class. The class has some more freedom in the lessons, but has a variety of students. In this class, I taught food science and processing first and really enjoyed teaching this class and bringing in food security and food waste as well. When I took over this class, I decided to try use the idea of interactive notebooks. I really enjoyed it, I do not know if it would work with every class, but the students enjoyed in and it helped me in planning as well. I also taught a unit on ag mech and focused on engines. Which scared me but helped me realize that it might take a little more effort, but I am capable of teaching something I may not be as knowledgable in and there are resources for that. I really enjoyed teaching this class due to the flexibility of this class. 

The last class I picked up was Horticulture and was honestly the one I was most nervous about because I did not feel as confident in the subject area. I got to spend sometime in the greenhouse learning about things functions and seeing how they run their greenhouse. When I took over we spend sometime in lecture, but a lot of our time in the greenhouse. I feel if I were to teach a plant science or horticulture class that while it can be done without a greenhouse, in a dream world I would like to have one and it provides a cool hands on component for the students. With that though, I think it is important that large crop farming and agronomy is also brought into this class. I think that it is great they get that greenhouse experience but that should not be the students only part of reference. With that I was able to bring in talk about fertilizer application and how that works on a large scale and in they real world. In this unit, my students learned and review soil samples and determined how much to apply on a large operation, but we also then tied it to the greenhouse and how that works. Connecting real world and large scale ideas to what is occurring locally and at school is one of the most important things. 

As far as SAE and FFA, I was able to attend all of the officer meetings and help with planning of upcoming events. I was also able to help with SAEs, CDE brainstorming, and Envirothon during club period on Wednesday mornings with FFA members. I was able to attend a few trips with FFA like National Convention, Farmshow, ACES, and Northern Regional CDEs with Honesdale. This helped me to see how to plan a trip and what goes into those trips with admin and students. As far as SAE goes, I was able to visit and watch a few SAEs happen, but one of the biggest things I noticed was that students have SAEs sometimes they just do not put it in the AET and make them official, so encouraging that and finding ways for them to keep them organized and up to date would be important and helpful. 

Overall, I can not say enough positive things about my time at Honesdale, I have learned a lot and grew a lot as a teacher and person. I feel like I still do not know enough, but also feel like I know more than I thought. It has been a fast 15 weeks, and I am going to miss this, but also am excited and nervous and every other emotion about my time student teaching and moving on to my next phase.