Week 2 and 3: Gilbert High School

Well, I missed last week's update, so it's a two for one this week!

Week 2: January 24 - January 28

Last week I started teaching my two periods of horticulture. It went surprisingly well for my first lesson. The kids seemed to be interested in what I was doing, so I was off to a good start. On Tuesday, Mr. Davis and I took our officers, and some Roland-Story kids, to the capitol for the Legislative Symposium. It was good for the students to be able to talk to their representatives about current issues in education and in agriculture. While we were at the capital, there were some protesters, which was neat for the students to see as well. I'm pretty passionate about animal agriculture and such, so I got on my soap box and talked to my students about how important it is to know what groups are supporting because they don't always do what they say they are going to do. A lot of them are actually out to hurt the agriculture industry rather than help it... (cough, cough, Human Society of the United States, cough, cough...).

The rest of the week went fairly well. We were supposed to have an officer meeting one morning before school, and I was the only one that showed up. It really put into perspective for me where FFA rates at Gilbert. The students like it, but it is not a priority. By the end of the week I started to see some discipline problems that were occurring in Hort. I decided to give one of my sections of Hort a seating chart since they couldn't handle sitting by their friends...well, that backfired. They seem to talk more now. But, I'm sticking by my guns and leaving them in their new arrangement. On Sunday the Gilbert FFA Chapter had their annual chili supper. The students and I prepared the chili on Friday and set up for the event. The students ended up having about 170 guests at their supper, so I would consider that a success.

Week 3: January 31 - February 4

This week the only eventful thing that happened was a snow day on Wednesday. We went to school on Tuesday and were suppose to head to Grundy Center to Review Iowa Degrees on Tuesday evening, but we ended up getting out of school at 1:00pm, so that got postponed. Gilbert will have about 7 or 8 students trying for Iowa Degrees this year, the most they have ever had.

On Monday, in Horticulture, I did my first lab experiment. That was nothing short of a disaster. The kids were paying attention to the directions and didn't understand/or care to understand what was going to happen. So, I was trying to use the rest of the week to get the students to forget about the experiment (not working...). They keep asking to go water their plants and trying to convince them that I have a "secret helper" watering them for me, isn't working.

This week we had a lot of staff meetings about career days, ITEDS, and a few other topics. We had two students sign to play football at different colleges this week too, so that was kind of exciting. On Thursday, Dr. Retallick came to visit. It wasn't too much of an exciting day, but I got some good feedback from him. After he left, my behavior problems excelled in horticulture. These kids CAN'T be quiet! I have one student that may get a "heart to heart" if her attitude doesn't change about the course. While, Dr. Retallick visited, I was teaching my students how to take fast and efficient notes because apparently that is something they never learned before. Most of the students took to it very well, but a few just refuse not to write everything on the slide down...

I have learned, sometimes you just can't win.

Like I said, nothing too exciting to report. I'm just going to keep on keeping on.