Kaleb Farnham is a student-teacher here at ADM High School this semester, teaching Government, Economics, Sociology, and World History in Mr. Buchman´s room.

Farnham was originally going to the University of Iowa with plans of majoring in accounting but ended up switching to education because of Iowa’s high ranking education program and how well he got along with the faculty of the education program. His reasoning to become a teacher is “I really enjoy working with young adults as they’re very fun to work with, and I wanted to have an impact on my community.”

He lives in Norwalk and commutes about 30 minutes to come and teach here at ADM. His daily routine consists of waking up and taking care of his dog, heading to school, having about 30 minutes to prepare for the day and then teaching for the whole day. He does the typical teacher stuff after school, cleaning up and leaving. His evenings consist of grading student’s work and then cleaning the house. He decided to live in Norwalk and student teach here at ADM because he wanted to be independent and to not live near his parents who currently reside in Des Moines by Hoover High School.

Along with teaching during this semester, he´s also taken the TPA or  The Teaching Performance Assessment in order to get his teaching license. He also prepares for visits from his supervisor and participates in Seminars every Wednesday nights which go over how his student teaching is going and assigns extra assignments to go along with his student teaching.

Farnham believed he wasn´t as prepared with ¨classroom management especially with older kids because of their social dynamics to control.¨ He thinks he works very well with Mr. Buchman and they cooperate by doing multiple things. ¨We do a lot of grading, planning, and do a lot of co-teaching, and he also helps me develop myself as a teacher and develop my own teaching style.” Going through student teaching Farnham learned a lot about himself like ¨I definitely picked the right profession and it helps me mentally and emotionally and have loved building relationships here at ADM.¨

Farnham plans to find a long term sub job during the spring semester and hopefully have a full-time position when next fall rolls around. His final thoughts for ADM were this: ¨I´m really happy and thankful on how I was accepted into the ADM community and all the support everyone has given me here.¨