Mussings of a confused teacher

The past couple weeks I have been wracking my brain to figure out where to start when getting ready for my first year of teaching. Should I start with putting together a syllabus for each class and then figure out what to teach when or figure out what to teach and then do the syllabus?? Decisions, decisions!
Well one day I sat down and started going through text books that I had for different classes. I started to look through the chapters and figure out what areas I wanted to teach and then started to organized what order I should teach the material in. Earlier this summer I went through and laid out a sketch of what I wanted to teach each week to get an idea of the various topics I should cover and how much time I should spend on each topic. Once I knew all this I then went back with my teacher keeper and planned out my first couple weeks in vague detail on my planner. Now the next step is to go though and make detailed plans for each class.

While I have an idea of what to do now, I'm still lost about how to do that sometimes. I went to school to be an Agriculture teacher, and now I have a job where I just realized that I am only teaching 2 Ag classes out of 6 a day for the whole year. I'm more of a Tech Ed teacher and I have no idea what to teach in that area or how to teach it. I have done a lot of the things that I will be teaching as a hobby or with my father but to try and come up with a logical way to teach that to high school students and sometimes 25 of them at one time?!?! Where do I even begin?? And to add to that I have to find a time to go into school and figure out how to set up my two sometimes three classrooms and my office as well as try and organize things for myself and the other Ag teacher (who never seems to be available).

I guess I just need to plug on and fake it, 'till I make it right?
:)

Teacher Keeper

Here is my post about my teacher keeper. I have divided it into different sections and I have pictures of each sections

Here are the sections that I came up with:

The class schedule has the school year calendar as well as the list of classes by hour of the day.

The calendar is for monthly events and  then notes and todos for that month

The course description section is just because I'm new at this school and want to keep my ideas for classes in line with what the school has put in their course description list. I will probably take this out or change it next year to fit more of what I have done this year. 

The course planner section is for my weekly class by class planning for the semester. It's just like the blue planner books that the older teachers have used before. I'm more old fashioned like that and prefer to do things on paper so I made my own planner so I wouldn't have to have 5 books to lug around. I added a monthly calendar in between the weeks to help keep me organized with big events that should or could happen throughout that month and the semester.

Again I'm old fashioned and like to do things on paper so I created a grade book section. This way i can just have my teacher keeper with me and not have to drag around a laptop to enter grades into. Not to mention my new school has desktops so I don't have a laptop besides my own to lug around. So now all I need is my teacher keeper and the papers that need to be graded which I have decided I will keep in a file folder divided by class for each section of the file folder. I'm hoping that idea will work well to keep all the papers organized for the semester.

Now being an Ag teacher I just had to have an FFA section! This has a student contact list in it so that I have all their information in one place and again I only need to have my teacher keeper with me and not 10 different folders with different information. I also put a monthly calendar in this section to keep track of all the FFA event dates in one area.

I also created a Student Contact Information section for information about my students in my classes this is also where I can keep all my information if I need to contact parents and what it was about.

Lastly I put in a section for meeting notes. I know while student teaching we had a lot of meetings and I also lost track of my notes from one meeting to the next. So here I made my own note sheets. One the front I can keep track of what the date was and the topic for the meeting on the back of the note sheet I made a section for reminders and for to-dos by the next meeting or in regards to the meeting. 

I hope my ideas help if you want any of the materials let me know and I would be glad to send them to you. 

God Bless :) 

Starting something new for all the Ag Teachers out there!!!!

Well after finding a renewed love for Pinterest through the NAAE website, I have decided to try and start blogging. Key word there TRY. I have been looking through the numerous teacher posts on Pinterest related to organization and decorating classrooms as well as FFA and leadership or Ag topics. It has sparked my interest and desire to try and spread some of my own ideas for my fellow Ag teachers. So again I'm going to try and start this blogging thing but as my fellow Ag teachers will attest, we are always busy running around like a chicken with our heads cut off. That's just the life of an Ag teacher. I'm just starting out so I would love it if some other Ag teachers had some ideas or suggestions for things that I post. 
Somethings that I have found on Pinterest that I would LOVE to share, that I have found to so far be a great idea in helping me keep organized as I start out on this wonderful journey called life:
1) Teacher Keeper
~This gem is where I plan to keep all my information for the school year. I have created sections for Lesson plans, a calendar for the year, FFA, Student contact information, Grade book, School information (schedule, school calendar, emergency plans and so on) and I'm sure I'm forgetting some other sections but there are the majority. Some things you may be thinking why do you have paper copies of that stuff?? We'll I'm kinda in the middle of the paper generation and the technology generation. I don't particularly care for reading things on the computer all the time and it gets to be heavy to lug my laptop around everywhere. Also I'm too cheap to buy an ipad and too low teach to have an iphone. Plus being on the go all the time it seems faster and easier to pull out a binder and look up the information than to pull out the laptop and login and then search through the numerous files to get to the student's grades plus you need internet to access on-line grade books. Such a hassle in my mind but I'm slowly evolving. :) 
2) Decorating the office
~ I never thought about doing some of the ideas that I found. Such as using wrapping paper to decorate file cabinets. Whether that would be the sides of them or the drawer fronts. 
~ Creating the drop down hanging file folders.Ag Teacher Ideas Pinterest board is where I keep all my ideas  that I have found. This one will take a little time and elbow grease but I think it will work just fine once it's done and you can make it fit whatever design scheme you have going on in your office. 
3) Absent folder crate
~This is an idea that I had before I started ST but I found it again on Pinterest. It is pinned on my Ag Teacher Idea board. Basically it is where you put extra copies of homework or assignment sheets in the file for each day of the week or month depending on how you set it up. Then the student is required to look up what they missed. 
4) Absent or missing homework slips
~This idea I thought was GREAT!! While ST I found that it was hard to keep track of who was gone for what class and then when grading those assignments that were late remembering that they were late. So when I found this idea I fell in LOVE. When a student forgets to do, turn in, loses, or just plain didn't do their work you have them fill out the sheet in a binder to keep track of each class and then you have documentation and it's great for P/T Conferences as well. When they turn in the assignment they need to attach the color sheet to their homework (Pink or Red for missing/late work and Yellow for absent work).
5) Weekly Assignment board
~ One thing that I want to get for my new classroom is another smaller whiteboard to keep track of the weeks classes and what happened in each of them for each day. This way it helps the students who were gone know what they missed to a point and then it also helps you and the teacher remember what happened on what day. Because we all know that when we get busy we can't keep the days straight. haha. 
Oh boy I could go on and on and on about all the great ideas I have found but I think you should just take a look at my Ag Teacher Ideas Pinterest board and see them for yourself. I'm not very good at getting pictures uploaded onto my computer and then downloaded to various sites so bear with me I will try to get better at that as I try and make a go at this blogging thing. 
Until next time!

"Nothing is Impossible, The word itself says "I'm Possible" ~Audrey Hepburn