Interest Approaches: AEE 412 Lab #3

Enthusiasm. Engagement. Motivation. Interest.

These are all necessary ingredients in a successful classroom. There are other important ingredients - technical content, appropriate standards, organization and structure, practical assessments - there are many ingredients to a successful learning environment, but if there is a lack of enthusiasm and engagement no learning will occur.

This week our teaching labs focused on interest approaches and I don't think I've ever walked into an assignment feeling so prepared to then walk out/watch my video and feel so down. I felt really prepared before class - I was happy with my lesson plan for the start of my 8th grade introduction to agricultural careers class, it wasn't perfect but it was good for one of my first real lesson plans. Since I had written my unit plan for the class already I knew where I wanted the unit to go and how I wanted this lesson to start things off, I was going to utilize think-pair-share, having my students individually draw what they thought a person who has an agricultural career looks like, then pair up and discuss their drawings, creating a new combined drawing, which the students would then share out and we would have a class discussion on what is and is not an agricultural career. 

The right career can lead to being OUTRAGEOUSLY HAPPY!

In my head this all worked out great, the students had lots of ideas of careers, lots of questions, and were engaged in conversation, clearly interested in agricultural careers. Teaching about agricultural careers is important - we want students to pursue futures in agriculture, and for some students they may never really think about what they want to do "when they grow up" until they're getting ready to graduate high school, which for some can be too late. If we're lucky they have some idea, but it's never too early to start planting the seed in their minds of pursuing a career in agriculture. 

In reality things did not go as well. My written lesson plan was good, needed some improvements but I knew that. I did a better job of clearly providing my directions, both verbally and visually written on the board (which is surprising because I do not have good "whiteboard writing"). My timing felt good and I could see where my activity was going to lead into the rest of my lesson as I was leading it. And then it happened. I realized that when I split my students into groups I unintentionally created two very opposite groups, a group of the three "good" students and the group of three "problem" students (based on the roles we were each assigned to play). So my group of "good" students worked well together and came up with two different careers; my "problem" students completed the task but were slightly off track so they only came up with one real career. This led into our discussion but with fewer ideas to build from than planned and a student group lacking in energy, I could quickly feel myself becoming flustered - problem #1: lack of high energy activity =/= (doesn't equal) energized students.

And this leads us to problem #2: flustered teacher leads to nervousness which leads to decrease in already lacking enthusiasm. I am not a naturally enthusiastic person - I already know this. There are very few situations where I visibly show natural enthusiasm (and the percentage of those situations happening without an animal around is extremely low). However, this lack of natural enthusiasm does not work well in a classroom. Now don't mistake my lack of visible enthusiasm for lack of enjoyment - I really do love agricultural education and it's definitely a career for me and not a job (or really a lifestyle not a career). 

For a successful transfer of learning, students must be engaged in the learning process, they must be motivated to learn, they must be interested in what is occurring in the classroom - hence why we use interest approaches to engage students into what they are learning that day. However, a key part of an interest approach is the enthusiasm of the teacher, you cannot assume that students will be enthusiastic about something unless you (the teacher) are also genuinely enthusiastic about what you are teaching. You have to "hook" students into caring about what they are learning that day, they don't do it themselves.

If only it was that easy....

So after rambling about all of this, watching my video and listening to some of my peer feedback I think there are three main things I really need to focus on improving: 

#1 - Have a plan B: if your activity is not going as planned have a way you can spin it back on track (planning for both our classroom experiences and lab experiences, they might be different)

#2 - Don't let the nervousness/fluster take over: not sure how to help this other than lots of practice because like I've said before, I'm naturally terrified of being in front of people (again I know, does not make sense for this career)

#3 - The really IMPORTANT one -> Be More ENTHUSIASTIC: again I don't know how to do that without coming across as not genuine so anyone with advice please throw some my way, but I know it is a necessarily improvement

So that's it. Another week down. Ten (approximately) more to go.

May the odds be ever in our favor #PSUAgEd15