Endurance driven {Teach} on the Block #week8

Some may not know this about me, but I love running. You get lost in the motion and even though it is not fun in the moment, the feeling after is like no other. You feel confident and you feel ready for the day because your endurance and pain tolerance to push yourself is getting stronger. Now, I know not all teachers are runners however they have an endurance that I wish I had! Teaching classes, staying late a running clubs, organizing events, and still having a personal life is hard! This week, I have been pushed to my professional breaking point, I tried new things in class with a webinar, and unfortunately I had to deal with my honeymoon phase being over in my classes.

Are you ready to hear about the week? We are going to break it down into two parts (per usual) into our pros and cons BUT I am making sure to get the full picture, I will include both of my classes in these categories.

Pros: This week I was stretched to the limit by creating different lesson plans that helped students get the “big picture.”

Animal Science: I have loved Play-Doh since I was a kid, so why not incorporate it in lessons? I decided to create a lesson that incorporated my love of a kid activities into my reproductive lesson. Although this was a weird lesson for me to teach because I had never done it before, by incorporating that fun activity with Play-Doh it was comfortable to a talk about and the students relaxed as well!

Environmental Science: This week I did something different and decided to incorporate a webinar in cooperation with my class. The Peace Corps was doing a webinar about foods around the world! To bring that in to my class, I decided to intertwine my soil unit with a food activity that taught my students how to cook healthy foods with on a cheap budget. This activity was a great time for me to work on how I structured a hands on activity that the class could participate in and then wrap it all together.

One last fun activity that we all did was go to the Philadelphia Zoo all day on Friday! It was a great time for me to see some more parts of the city and hangout with my students outside of the classroom with of course an assignment attached to the trip!

Cons: This week, was a little stressful with all of the activities that I had planned and added on top of that my university supervisor was visiting. Can you say stress overload to the max? I had to breathe and get through this week to make sure that I could keep my sanity in check. Even on the day where my professor was visiting my lesson was a complete flop! It made me realize that you can plan all you want, but sometimes lessons don’t go as well as you would think.

Moral of the story this week? Smile and wave. Some days you need to fake it till you make it, where others your lessons go just as you planned. Teaching is a certain type of training that will put your teaching endurance to the test. All you have to do is keep training for that dream job, perfect lesson, and know that you are making a difference in the lives of your students everyday.

Thanks for reading Ag Ed Fam! Bring on week 9!