Week 1-2 Reflection
I’m sitting here on my computer, at the very beginning of week three. I have a spare this morning so I can get some work done before I whisk the students off to the computer lab to research their global breakfast projects. These first two weeks have been amazing, a rollercoaster of learning that is whizzing along with me on it, weather I’m prepared for it or not. Thankfully, I have felt pretty prepared, or prepared enough to have every lesson go the way I was more or less envisioning it.
I started off my first week with introductions and classroom expectation. To my pleasant surprise the students took the classroom expectations portion more seriously than I thought. I have two classes of junior foods, which means I’m starting off my teaching load at 50%. I do feel like I’m cheating a bit because they’re the same class. It’s so interesting for me to see the differences in the classes though. The number of students makes a difference, one is larger with 21 students, and the other is very modestly small at 13. I never would have expected to have mostly boys in my foods classes. We get so much information about boys thinking it’s a feminine class and that they’d never take it that it was something I just did not expect though. A pleasant surprise nonetheless.
It was hard to get through the first week without cooking much. I only did an applesauce lab on Wednesday, and that was it. The students are there to cook, and I want them to cook, but they have to learn kitchen safety first. Some of them have never step foot in a kitchen before, a surprising fact for me to wrap my head around as I have been cooking since I was 7. I need to make sure the students are all on more or less the same level. It’s harder for the more advanced students to wait for the others to catch up that the ones with less knowledge to catch up.
The second week was much more exciting for cooking. We started off the week canning the apple butter we had made on Tuesday. I had never canned before. I had to learn quickly. For me, a classic homesteader that relishes in projects like that, it was an exhilarating rush to learn something new that I can use in my daily life. By Thursday we were making Huevos Rancheros and listening to the Gipsy Kings in class. Friday we made fudge, and I can safely say that I am completely tired of fudge. I’ve made different kinds of fudge about 5 times this week. I think I need to detox.
What I learned:
- Be straight with the students, be honest and keep them accountable
- The students should all be doing relatively the same amount of work, even if they missed the class
- Clearly outline the job expectations in a visual manner that they can understand.
- Stay organized, students will just drop into your class after the first week and they need to catch up.. fast.
- Focus on student centered learning. How can I create projects that pull the focus from me talking to them learning on their own accord?
- Clearly outline the expectations before anything happens, don’t be afraid that these expectations will leading to them not liking you, it’s not about that.
- Always schedule in dead time and have something for them to do.
- Slow down explanations and make sure it’s clear.