Marvelous Life of Michaela

I am sitting here writing this blog and trying to think all the way back to January, which marked my first week of student teaching. Back in that moment, I could never have imagined that I would make it through or that it would fly by, but here I am at the end of week 14 and I can't seen to figure out where the time went. I will always cherish the memories that I made along the way and how much I learned from my students and mentors.  When I was first approached about considering Pequea Valley as a cooperating center, my first thought was "how do you even pronounce that" and my second thought was "I have never heard of this school before." After my first meeting with Jasmine VanSant and Doug Masser, I thought that this could be a great place to student teach at and now that I have gone through this experience, I know that I could not have asked for a more perfect placement.  At Pequea Valley, I met amazing people and had the best students a student teacher could...

This week was my very last week student teaching at Pequea Valley High School and a fun one to end on. Right now, I am only reaching one class and it is the class that I taught the full 14 weeks. We had a HUGE event take place that I felt very fortunate to be a part of and there were many sad goodbyes and thank you's.  Vet Science was the class that I had from start to finish, so naturally, I began slightly attached to every part of this class. We had the fetal pig dissection, animal restraints, bandaging, suturing, and more! Every step of the way was pushing myself outside of my comfort zone and learning new content areas. This week, the focus was on suturing, which is one of the topics that I was most excited to learn. While we only spent a few days on this, I learned so much about knot tying and techniques. For this lesson, I performed a demonstration on how to tie a knot for suturing and then students practiced on rulers. It was a fun lesson overall, and the students were pros ...

If I could come up with one word to describe the past week, it would be "nonstop." Nonstop grading. Nonstop planning. Nonstop after-school activities. Nonstop long hours. Nonstop FUN! Each day was packed full from start to finish, and while it might have felt like too much as some points, it was overall a fun week and allowed me to get extra time with my cooperating teachers and students before I leave next Friday.  Daily Recap:  Two days this week, students in Vet Science got to practice bandaging dogs paws with 6 different fur-friends! My cooperating teacher brought in two of her dogs, two of her in-laws dogs, and then another teacher at Pequea Valley brought in 2 dogs (which happened to be one of my ct's dogs puppies from last year). While this added to the chaos of the week, it was really neat to get students to get real-life experience bandaging animals, plus who doesn't love having cute animals at their work all day?! Potty breaks with sisters Ivy and Willow! Yo...

I know I say this every week, but this week flew by! I might have only been in school for three days of the week, but it still went by quickly and realization is really kicking in that I now only have 10 days left of student teaching at Pequea Valley.  Tuesday started off with the classroom filled with delicious smelling pie crusts! The Foods Unwrapped students spent the Wednesday before (we were virtual on Thursday before the holiday break, unfortunately) creating dough for pie crusts to determine which type of lipid created the most desirable pie crust. The lipids in question were Crisco, butter, and canola oil. Before the lab, students had background information about lipids, types of lipids, and the functional properties of lipids. They also understood the differences between saturated and unsaturated fats and know which lipids are the healthiest, and which are not so healthy. Tuesday the students came in and we baked the pie crust right away so they could observe and taste the...

This week, I went fishing... okay, not really, but close enough!! On Tuesday, I went to a fish hatchery for an SAE visit, and it was definitely a fun one! I was especially excited to visit with this student and learn all about her SAE when I found out that she had an unpaid placement at a fish hatchery, because I have never been to one and don't know much about them either. I also found out that this hatchery is only 5ish minutes from where I am staying while student teaching! When we go to this SAE visit, the student explain everything about what a fish hatchery is, why they have one, and what they do with the fish when they are large enough to send off. We came at a time where she had to feed all the fish, which was another great thing to learn about. I learned that this particular fish hatchery is run by a group of individuals who volunteer their time to raise, care, and release trout into rivers and streams in the area.  While this is an unpaid placement, it comes with hours of...

All I can say about the ending of week 11 is UGHHHH! Because of Easter break, Pequea Valley has an awesome 4-day weekend. With a short week this week and long weekend coming up, we have a lot of labs, activities, and units to wrap up. Food science students were supposed to bake pie crust (more on this later) and horticulture students were supposed to continue to build hydroponics systems. Unfortunately, like every other day this school year, we had an obstacle thrown at us via email on Wednesday after school. One word; COVID. What does that mean?? It means a last minute shift to a virtual learning day to end the week, and no more labs/hands-on activities.  Huge shout-out to my CT for bringing me coffee today!! It was the perfect way to start a virtual learning day! As a college student, I understand the frustration and lack of motivation on the student end of things when it comes to virtual learning. Now as I shift to a teacher's perspective on virtual learning, I know all the effo...