Welcome to McGuffey - Week One

Well, I have finished my first week at McGuffey High School!  I was warmly welcomed with my own desk along with its own chair and everything!! I am very, very excited. The very first two days we had spent at the 101st Pennsylvania Farm Show. This was a really good way to start into the observation week. My first day was on Wednesday. My students were more than happy to finally see me at school. They continued to ask me if I was here everyday from now on, and I was happy to answer "Yes!".  My first day was a little crazy. I watched Mrs. Cambruzzi teach all of her classes that day and it was really interesting. The students in every class would walk in and begin their work. There was almost no questions asked from them to her. Even with her out for 2 days, they knew exactly what they were doing. It was really neat to watch.

The only class that Mrs. Cambruzzi has that is repeated is her introduction to agriculture class. She has 3 of those classes in periods 2, 4 and 13. On Wednesday, she taught her periods 2 and 4, and then informed me to teach period 13.  Period 13 is one of her 'bad' classes. All of the introduction to agriculture classes are all 8th graders. So I feel like I have a special opportunity at McGuffey to teach high school and teach middle schoolers!  The main issue with 13th period is the boys. There are quite a few of them and they can be very rowdy. I did my best to teach the lesson like Mrs. Cambruzzi, but she did step in from time to time to help me control them. I don't have my classroom management down like she does quite yet, but it will come soon enough!

After the day was over, Mrs. Cambruzzi and I sat down and reflected on our day. At this point, we decided to talk about the day every day. For the first time, we stayed after school for 2 hours. It was SO beneficial to me to have that one on one with her. I also really like how she challenged me on the first day. I know I will be learning so much.. In fact, these next 15 weeks I feel like I will be learning more than I have in my entire college career.

Thursday rolled around and I watched and helped Mrs. Cambruzzi anywhere I could. It is definitely nice to have an extra set of hands. We started our day off with a planned fire drill at 8:30. This was another good learning opportunity for me. After the fire drill, we went back to class as planned. Around 9:30, the fire alarm went off again. Renee and I looked at each other with a puzzled look and took our students outside, just like we had done an hour ago. As we walked outside, we saw Mr. Leasure and talked to him. Apparently in the ag hallway, there is a lower emergency exit sign, and some of the boys are pretty tall and they were telling a story with their hands, and one of them swung his hands up and knocked the exit sign off! Mr. Leasure saw the whole thing and tried to fix it and sent a student to tell maintenance. I felt so bad for John, as it was a funny story but he made the whole school evacuate again.

As our eventful morning continued, I got to teach 4th and 13th period again. 4th period was good, I felt respected and they listened to me. I really love being in the teacher role. I am not sure why, but I feel at home. Although it may be because I moved to a place that I am not familiar with at all and this is the only social interaction I get, but I will take it!  13th period came around and I took control of my class this time. I asked them to sit in their assigned seats and it was amazing. The students really listened and did their work. Another thing Renee taught me was how to have a teacher ear on all the time. You can work one-on-one with a student and still manage a classroom. I had watched her do this and it is quite the special skill. She told me I will get better at it, and when I really practiced it in class, I could see the difference.

Week one was great. It went by too fast. Tomorrow I will be teaching my lesson plans with the greenhouse production class. This week I am starting off with learning and identifying plants. This will then go into scientific classification, using a dichotomous key and classifying plants in many different ways. From there, I plan to have the students then use this knowledge and plan out when or how they may order plants or plan a landscape.

Well... Here comes another great week! Wish us luck over on the Western side of the state!