Nathaniel chapter 6

My goal as an agriculture teacher is to better prepare students for life.  I am afraid that students have become more aware of the obstacles in the world instead of the accomplishments that are possible.  I catch myself doing the same thing though.  I come from a long line of story tellers as most of my class mates can now testify to first hand and I have done and seen a great deal of things attempted and failed but learned from.  One theory seems to resonate with me personally the  social cognitive theory and to me it seems like learning from watching others.  In an agriculture class you can show students how to repot plants properly then guide them through it a few times and then let do a few dozen and they'll have it down.  I like kinesthetic learning, for me hands on has led to a great deal of success whether it was learning to run high hurdles or operate machinery for a living.  I put my hands or body in the position I was observing and tried to mimic what I had seen until it became habit.  I understand that this is also a visual modality but the action side of things always appealed to me.  The procedural and conditional knowledge the chapter told about struck home with me because I believe the kids who walk into an agriculture class are either looking for and easy A or are interested in Agriculture.  To me the kids with the interest in Agriculture will soak up the class like a sponge but the kids looking for an easy A will be just as important as the Aggies.  I want to place emphasis on the fact that they are looking not the fact they are looking for an A.  It will be my quest to look for the spark that makes it click.  The book talks about long-term memory and retrieval which jump off the page to me.  The trick is not only facts and figures and it took me a while to figure that out.  I took an Identification class that had us learn 500 different plant species and about 2 years later I realized I had been taught the procedure for keying out plant species rather than all those genus and species.  The retrieval is so important in getting the kids ready for the next school year and for life, I would call it working knowledge. I want my students to not believe that they know every thing but have confidence that they can figure it out.  Whether its learning how to key out plant material for identification or watching an all state hurdler practice it is all a matter of figuring out how to use this working knowledge in a productive and useful manner.

CSEL Case study
Misbehaving upper classmen are just something to let slip by.  Our case said the boys were disrupting class but close to graduation and I had thought of telling them if they did not straighten up then I could impress upon them the importance for their completion for graduation.  That strategy still smells like something a foreman over a work crew would do like threatening a man's pay check if he does not pick up the pace,  which I have done,  but still does not head in the cognitive direction.  I believe I would try to take them aside individually and impress upon them how poor of an example they are setting.  I would even make them sit apart in class but perhaps that's still not a cognitive solution more environmental.  I may have them learn a mnemonic device that I had to learn my junior year in college about soil nutrients for punishment.  It goes like this:
CHOPKINS Ca Fe Mg B Mn Cu Zn , and spoken like C Hopkins café managed by mine cousin.  It may sound silly but it is a way aggies used to remember Macro nutrients and micro nutrients.  I  would hope that the device and being drilled over it would impress upon them my unwillingness to allow them to disrupt my classroom.  It is a difficult task for me as a dad to try to approach punishment from a cognitive standpoint.  I am so used to telling my kids to do something and when they ask why I just tell them because you do not want the alternative.  I know that sounds barbaric but it really is mostly bark especially once they are 7 or 8 yrs old a protocol is established.  My experience would be approach these boys as if they are young men as well though which I why I consider the example they set so important.