Marvelous Life of Michaela

Week two has been an interesting one, that is for sure! We started off the week working with animals (live and stuffed) and ended with two days of virtual learning due to COVID cases. While each day was filled with ups and downs, challenges and successes, I think that I am started to get a hang of the online school grading and assignment platforms and learning most students names and personalities. This week was all about clarity (from Rosenshine and Furst Effective Teaching), and for this blog I will discuss times in the past week where I found myself lacking in this area. The first "oh crap" moment was small, but really got me thinking about how I communicate with students, whether that is verbally or visually. For our lab, I split students into two groups by handing out two different colored sticky notes. They were blue and pink and each color was labeled 1-8. When I went to dismiss my students, I told them that the blue group should go to the shop and the pink stay in the...

Friday, January 22, 2021 completed my first official week of student teaching at Pequea Valley High School, and it was great! I got to start teaching 7th period Vet Science on Tuesday, and for the rest of the day I was observing Mr. Masser, Mrs. VanSant, and the students that I will be teaching in the weeks to come. I spent the week observing, teaching, and navigating Schoology. I was also fortunate enough to attend the Lancaster County Ag Teacher meeting and an FFA officer meeting to start off my student teaching career! When I first walked into the classroom and saw the students, I wondered how I was ever going to learn the names of the students. Knowing names is very important and I know that by communicating with each student by name, I am able to build a better connection and positive environment for everyone. To tackle the task of remembering names, I created a DIY seating chart in my notebook. When I learn the name of the student, I wrote their names in my seating chart and each...