Have you ever been curious to what the first year of a beginning teacher is like? If so, you are in luck for we are diving into the experience that Matt Holt had this past year teaching at Brockway High School in Jefferson County, Pennsylvania. Matt is one of the educators from the #psuaged16 cohort. The communications team had asked him several questions to better understand how his year went as a beginning teacher.
Matt Holt's experience was rather rough as he struggled with new expectations, designing new lessons, and dealing with a group of students who have never met him or only knew of him from outside the classroom. "My first year of teaching was probably the roughest year of my life," he stated. Even though his first year was a really rough transition for him he came out of it stronger and a better teacher. He was able to develop his own classroom expectations, and learned a great deal about classroom management. Even though he had incredible struggles in his first year teaching his piece of advice should not be taken lightly. His advice is, "One piece of advice I would give to any first year teacher is to just stick through it. If you can get through year one, year two becomes so much easier and I'm sure it will continue to get better after this." Matt's experience has given him more strength to succeed in being an educator.
He has had two incredibly inspiring moments in his first year educating. His first moment was when a student had blown up in front of him, and walked out of the classroom. Matt did not say a word to him, and after he had left a student had asked him how he was able to handle that with a straight face. It made him realize that one student can affect the entire atmosphere of the classroom, and how important it is to rebound from those situations. His second inspiring moment isn't negatively inspired, but rather sentimental in value. He had a student come talk to him after class about his father who died from cancer. Matt was able to relate to this student for his dad is dying from cancer. He stated, "It made me realize just how important forming bonds with your students outside of the classroom can really be." He says that his favorite part of being an agricultural educator is seeing a student who is having a hard time learning the material, and then finally understanding it especially when it is a difficult topic.
To learn more about starting on the path to having a career that makes a positive impact on the lives of students across the globe by becoming an agricultural educator, please contact the agricultural teacher education program at teachag@psu.edu. Follow us on Twitter at TeachAgPSU, on Facebook, or on our blog.
Luke Kerstetter
Student Blogger
Twitter Handle: @lmkerstetter96
2020 Agricultural Education Student Teacher
