Guest Blogger-Relationships

Student-Teacher Relationships

Many of you know that I have excellent relationships with students. What most of you DON’T know is how I cultivate those relationships.

I am blessed to have chosen to be an agricultural educator and FFA advisor. Most of my relationship building happens in the classroom, where I ask honest and sincere questions. I ask questions about the AR book he is reading, or about her basketball game the other night, or about the plans student council has for homecoming week. I ask questions about her family and friends. I simply ask questions! Questions lead to conversation which leads to respect and good relationships.

I am fortunate to create opportunities for my students – events and activities that occur outside of the school. Field trips are a wonderful occasion to work on student relationships. On bus rides, I am rarely sitting in “my” seat at the front of the bus. I move around, talking to all of the different groups of students, playing a game of cards if the trip is long enough, and even participate in sing-a-longs.

My student relationships are built year-round. I use social media to keep the ag program in front of students throughout the year. I’ve been using Instagram recently because the app will push to Twitter and Facebook automatically. I use the Remind texting app with FFA officers for practice and meeting reminders. My latest addition is a new television that displays monthly activity calendars, announcements, celebrations, objectives, and an ag comic. Students engage with the TV daily.

I continue relationships with students after they graduate from PHHS. Several students each year pursue their American FFA Degrees which requires students to work with me on record books and applications during their college breaks. The students that pursue agricultural education in college are the neediest! They ask all sorts of questions. I have former students that work locally in the industry of agriculture who contact me with job openings, scholarships, and events that might interest my students.

What can you do to begin cultivating relationships? Talk to the students. Ask them questions. Respect them and their opinions (as wacky as they are sometimes). Laugh with them. Catch pancakes with them. Be flexible with them while still maintaining expectations.

P.S. Thank you for your continued support of the ag program and FFA here at PH! Pancake Day is coming up on March 26 and I hope you will come down and catch your breakfast!

Personalized Learning Through Infographics

This week I want to share a few infographics I have picked up over the last few weeks during my professional learning time.  I hope to connect them to personalize learning for you.

























Light Blue- Student Actions
Dark Blue- Teachers Actions
1.  What in the dark blue is personalized for the students?  How could you make it even more personalized?
2.  Look at the "Target Not Attained" or "Target Attained" box.  How do you make student-centered choices at the decision point?


1.  Look at the bold terms.  How could you use some of those strategies for personalized learning?  How could they be sued as quick informal assessments?
2.  Pick one of the strategies and try it this week.


1.  How does a teacher find a balance between the red and blue? 
2.  Pick one of the lines that you may be on the blue side, develop a way to start moving on that line from the blue to red.

Personalize Learning-Personalize Communication

In some recent professional learning time, I started to do a deep dive into some of Alice Keeler's (@alicekeeler) recent tweets.  She has been tweeting about personalized learning last 4 or 5 days.

A few of the items she tweeted about are below.

Here is the neat thing about these two tweets.  These two resources are used in our building often.  The Science Simulations from PHET are used by all of the Science teachers.  Storyboard That is used regularly in the English Department.  Pretty cool.

As I was digging a bit more into her recent tweets I found something pretty cool.  She has developed a template for a personalized newsletter.  The personalization comes in the form of it being a newsletter made for an individual student.  Her templates and script make something like an individualized newsletter possible.  I thought this might be interesting to some of you.

I also thought this was interesting.  This is an example of how PE teachers, and other elective courses, could incorporate some personalized learning with Google.

Questions To Consider:
1.  What did you take away from February 5th personalized learning day?  Have you tried it yet?
2.  I was happy to see some shared resources already being utilized in the building.  Has that every happened to you?  Have you been listening to a presentation or saw something online and thought "I am a bit ahead of this curve?"
3.  Could you see yourself trying to utilize the personalized newsletter?  How could you give it a try on a smaller scale first?

Professional Learning: Mindset for a Professional Learning Day

Tommorrow is a professional learning day for us at PH.  Much work has gone into the planning of the day by multiple people.  I would highly encourage you to stay engaged throughout the day.  Challenge yourself to take two new innovative ideas away.  They could be small-tiny ideas; like "instead of standing by the windows, I am going to stand by the colorful backdrop of a bulletin board to draw more eyes to me when I am leading the discussion."  Better use of space.

The day is focused on personalized learning.  How can we best meet the needs of every student in their own unique way?  To encourage you a bit, watch this quick video of some students explaining how teachers had impacts on them.

For Consideration:
1.  How can you be engaged in all your sessions on Monday?
2.  What distractions do you need to fight to stay engaged?  Cell phone (leave it behind), Email (it will be there later) grading papers (not the time for it) etc...
3.  For reflection after Monday.  Write this down on a post-it note or a scrap paper:  What two new ideas did I take away from Monday?




For a little fun, here is a video having fun with what happens on teacher PD days.