Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Reflection #1: Introduction

Hello all, good luck to everyone on this busy semester, I'm sure everything will be worth it.  First of all, I am teaching high school agriculture at Canyon Lake High School.  This has been a huge change for me as I grew up in a very rural area and graduated with a class of around seventy students.  So far, I have been adjusting to the change getting used to the large size of the campus and student population.  
Educators are definitely unique in that we have many things required of us that fall into our job.  Every teacher has different requirements, but I believe Ag teachers have very strenuous ones on top of everything else.  This is not to say that an Ag teacher's job is any tougher than another teacher's job, however as this is my field of study, I do believe that it is very tough.  On top of grading papers, preparing material and lesson plans, teaching in the classroom, and dealing with students on the daily, Ag teachers have to go the extra mile.  Three extra things that we must do as Ag teachers to be worth our job, and this is not the only three just simply three in particular, are checking on livestock projects after hours as well as driving all over this great state and others to find livestock to buy for students, taking care of funds and dates for livestock, and the actual shows.  I realize that is more than three, but they would simply not do the job justice.  Also, there is the training of teams, travel arrangements, and other factors.  Now to really answer the question above of "List what you believe to be the top three roles of a teacher," I believe that a teacher must be observant to notice important things about his/her students to be able to properly teach to cater to their needs, be caring but firm and sometimes strict to keep order as well as maintaining respect in the classroom (nobody respects a sissy) and finally being prepared.  By manipulating those three how you wish I believe a lot can fall under those.