Micro-teaching with Mr. Bittner at Milton

 Last week, I had the pleasure of traveling to Milton Area High School on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday for my Micro-teaching Assignment. For this assignment, we were tasked with teaching three lessons that fit where the class currently was in their curriculum. I was assigned Mr. Bittner's Food Science and Safety Class! 

On Monday, I observed with Mr. Bittner and started to get to know his Food Science and Safety class. I was excited to learn that he has a TA for this class, and got to know Talen throughout the week as he helped the class through setting up and executing our many Labs. I also got a chance to get to know Mr. Bittner and some of the other wonderful faculty at Milton. Mr. Bittner started this Program 5 years ago, and has created a very exceptional facility and course offerings. Throughout this whole experience he was very honest and inspiring as he shared his "tricks to the trade". 

On Wednesday, I was able to jump right into teaching, and introduced the class to Unit Operations of Food Science. Based on the pacing of Mr. Bittner's curriculum, I was hoping to cover this content and start and finish the jam making process during day one. Unfortunately, keeping up with guided notes took longer than I had originally planned, but students seemed to really enjoy their vocab foldable!

On Tuesday, class started off great! I had planned for the seniors in the class to be at their senior meeting, and Mr. Bittner had them get ahead by processing their jam during their first block. However, just as we had groups on their way to cooking their jam, the seniors started to filter in. I again had to adapt the plan, and move them onto the next activity of making rolls and butter. Unfortunately, due to a local Tik Tok trend, there was absolutely no heavy whipping cream in Milton. This lead to a real inquiry lab, where the students found out that to make butter the substance being processed has to have a specific fat content. At the conclusion of class on Tuesday, despite the bumps in the road, each group had a jar of jam (that actually sealed!) and had rolls that were ready to rise overnight in the fridge. 

On Wednesday, we had a great conclusion to microteaching. We began with a student satisfaction survey to be sure that we would not run out of time. I was pleased with its results, and welcomed the students' feedback, as I would like to improve my teaching abilities. We then had an assessment to serve as a check for understanding, and the students demonstrated that they were really understanding the unit operations content as they applied it in their labs. The students worked to concluded their first lab by baking their rolls, and experimenting more with their butter. I had them reflect in their lab notebooks about their conclusion questions and be sure to have their data tables complete. Finally, students got the chance to try their butter (after finding heavy whipping cream closer to State College), their rolls, and their strawberry jam! They did a wonderful job, and I was very proud of them. We finished our time together by beginning an analysis of apple products and determining the unit operations that led to those products. 

This experience relates to what I know about teaching because I was able to apply what I had just learned about inquiry and apply it to the class' labs as well as create lesson plans and adapt them as needed when things didn't go as planned. I learned that despite our practice in AEE 412 lab, pacing is hard. After discussing this with Mr. Bittner, I really think pacing my lessons will come with lots of practice, especially if I get a chance to know the needs of my students. I hope to apply everything I learned last week, including the fact that I would really like to teach Food Science (Are you surprised? I was!), to my future time as I begin teaching!

Here's to Part of the Whole Tree, 

Ms. Holtry