Week 12 of Student Teaching!

It's hard to believe that I just complete twelve weeks of student teaching! It's even harder to believe this was my first full week of classes since nearly February! Every week we either had some sort of interruptions that caused us to have a shortened week. So having a full week of classes was noticeable but nice to have!

This week in large animal science we focused on genetics! I finally was able to use the foldable that I received in NAAE back in late November! I quickly realized that this activity took a  lot more time than expected, never overestimate students cutting and taping abilities. One thing I would change if I were to do this activity is to have step-by-step instructions with pictures to help build the foldable. I thought if I had directions on the board and me walking around with a sample would be enough, but students still struggled. 

At first, I was a little nervous to include foldable into the lesson but I haven't done them before and wasn't quite sure on how to introduce them. But I am glad I do! Overall, the students really liked them! It was a nice break from guided notes and gave students an interactive way to receive information!  

With the last remaining weeks, I want to challenge myself even further on introducing new activities into the classroom! Foldable was a good risk! So I am looking forward to seeing what other risks I can take to increase student learning! If anyone has some cool and interactive lessons I could use send them my way! 

Urban AG

This week the PSUAgEd19 cohort spent some time outside of the classroom for our spring retreat! The first part of our trip was spent delivering Project Learning Tree lessons. Each of us prepared a 15-minute lesson on one of the activities in the books. We all were asked to choose different lessons so we could see the variety of lessons that the book had to offer. I loved that we were able to see how everyone changed the lessons to meet the needs of their students. I heavily relied on the Project Learning Tree this semester and has been an awesome resource!

After our PLT activities, we were off to Baltimore to see a new side of agricultural education! We spent Thursday morning at Hampstead Hill Academy, an elementary school! The Academy offered a class Food For Life. Where students learn about nutrition and how to eat healthily. The students were prepping their salads as we were walking in and we had the chance to taste them! Students were totally engaged with preparing salads and the whole time students were active.  I am quite familiar with working with elementary aged students. For the past few summers, I was a camp counselor and spent a lot of time working with campers and the farm that camp had. I had forgotten how much fun and eager younger kids were until visiting the academy!

We visited a couple of other locations where they focused on urban agriculture. One location had a computerized shipping container that has was made into an indoor garden, where students were growing basils and lettuce. Urban Ag was something that I was not too familiar with but the trip provided a great insight into what it is and how it would look like!

We ended the trip with us working on a project for a newly stated charter school. Our project will include creating 4-6 g raised beds for students. This charter school was unique because it was founded by a group of mothers who didn't like the elementary school in their hometown and wanted to create a better school for their kids.  I thought this was incredible and couldn't imagine the amount of work and dedication that these mothers had to put to start this school. The school is planned to open up this Fall, so I am excited to see how our project will turn out for them!

Overall that has been one of my favorite trips with PSUAgEd19! It was awesome to see another side of agricultural education. Recently I have accepted a position with the
 Peace Corps, as an Urban Agriculture Extension Agent.  This trip really provided with insight on other opportunities to be involved in agriculture education, if I decide not to head into the classroom afterward. 

SAE Visit #2

My second SAE visit was with a junior in the Pequea Ag Program. His SAE is in the category of placement for the work he does at Hooberinc! This student SAE project is assembling and servicing Kubota equipment. This is a unique opportunity for the student because this project was set-up at an internship through Pequea Valley FFA.  Mr. Masser and Mrs. Vansant reached out to Hooberinc to set up this partnership. The goal is to provide students with real-life experiences and provide Hooberinc with skilled individuals who are eager to learn!

We arrived at Hoober Inc at 3:00pm. We were greeted by the students boss who gave us an overview of what the student was doing and how they were performing. After that, we met up with the student who gave us a tour of his work.  As we were walking through the shops, the student would tell us the projects he was working on. The tour concluded with questions about his work that included:

• What is your day to day task?
• Who do you talk to when you have a question?
• Do you feel comfortable asking questions?
• What do you like and dislike about the job?
• How does this project aligned with your career goals?

Overall I was very impressed with the visit. This student has the opportunity to work with equipment that costs thousands of dollars. He's gaining new skills in mechanics, getting paid, and receiving credit for school. Pequea Valley does an excellent job helping students set up a project and providing opportunities for them to pursue an interest related to their career goals!

I look forward to seeing how I could include a program like this for my future students!

A Week Load of Student Accomplishments

Week 10 brought tons of excitement and opportunity to dive deeper into agricultural education. This week I spent a lot of time interviewing and seeing how FFA has impacted students when running for chapter office and county degrees.

Wednesday I served as a member of the 2019-2020 Garden Spot FFA Officer Team Selection Committee at Lampeter-Strasburg High School. This gave me a unique opportunity to see how other chapters select their officer.  Every chapter is a little different when it comes to selecting a chapter officer. Garden Spot has three parts to their selection; application, membership vote, and interviews with the selection committee. I was on a committee with three other representatives. A high school teacher, an agricultural extension agent, and an industry leader/community person. I like how Garden Spot brings in different members part of the community. This helps grow the student's network, but it also allows community members to see the impressive works that the chapter does. By the end of the night, we were able to slate seven officers in positions. Members will find out the results at the banquet in a couple of weeks.

Another excellent opportunity I had this week was serving as a judge for the Red Rose Star Interviews. This event was the Next Generation Ag Day at the Farm and Home Center, where chapters from all over Lancaster came to compete in the County Public Speaking Contest and Red Rose Star Interviews. It was my pleasure to work with Carole Fay and Deb Seibert both rockstars retired Ag teachers! I was blown away by the number of work students had put into their SAE projects! For most parts, students were able to articulate their thoughts and share their SAE with us. It was exciting to see the range of SAE projects and the backgrounds the students had. Some students came from family farms, and others did not, but they sought out opportunities to develop their SAE. By the end of the interviews, we placed a star in Agribusiness, Placement, and Production! Next step for them is states! As judges were able to give them some remarks on how to strengthen their application and interviews so they'll be ready for the state convention in June. Working with Carole Fay and Deb Seibert was awesome! It was great to hear about their programs and how to navigate SAE, especially with applications.

To end the week three groups Pequea Valley FFA members were recognized at state convention and had the opportunity to go to the Big E to compete! This was another great way to show the impact FFA has on students and the benefits an Ag program has to offer to students!

e School Board meeting. The first to be recognized were members who received their Keystones at the Mid-Winter convention. The second group was first-year members who received their FFA jacket at Mid-Winter. The last group to be recognized as the Poultry CDE team. They placed second at

Overall this has been a very busy week but full of student recognition and accomplishments!

Ticket-Out

Week 9 was weirder than the rest with scheduling. This week we had a two-hour delay, two half days, and a full day off on Friday. So planning for this week was a little hectic! It's been a challenge to prepare content for the week when there's only about an hour and a half of instructional time! But with all the delays this week went pretty smoothly.

One cool opportunity I had this week was to sit in and watch a couple of senior presentations. Pequea Valley requires seniors to present presentations as part of their requirement for graduation. This is the first year of them doing it, so it was new to everyone. Presentations are about 15 minutes long with questions from the judges at the end. The presentations are for seniors to showcase their accomplishments from the past four years and how they are prepared to enter college or the workforce after graduation. 

The few I watched were my current seniors in class. It was great for me to see their journey through high school and FFA. It was incredible to see how being part of the Ag Ed program, and FFA has shaped them into who they are now. They credited a lot of their success to the Ag program and how FFA gave them direction to what they wanted to pursue after high school. 

When I was a senior in high school, my ag teacher had the seniors do a presentation as well. As I sat and watched I remember my time in my Ag program with all the experiences I had. It gave me a path to pursue just as it did for these seniors.  

A question I have is, do other schools or chapters have seniors do some sort of senior presentations as a ticket out of the program? 

Can you hear me now?

Hoooooold up! It's been eight weeks? That is so crazy to think!  A lot has happened these past few weeks among all the delays and cancellations. This past week I was especially excited to pick up my fifth class, Horticulture! Overall, the group of students is awesome and have a lot of personalities! This is by far my biggest class with the number of students in it; a total of 22!

Out of all the excitement, I quickly realized that this will be my most challenging group. This is not because of behavior issues but the amount of energy this class has. These kiddos are ENERGETIC. There's a mix of 9-12 graders, and they all get along so well. A challenge that I foresee with this group and have experienced a little bit is wrangling them in.  A couple of times I lost the group for a bit with their side conversations and had to use my TEACHER voice to bring back their attention because they are not listening.

I've worked with elementary students at camp, and when this would happen, I would use silly techniques like "1.2.3. Eyes on me", "if you hear my voice clap once," and my personal favorite performing a clapping pattern and them repeat it back to me. It worked well with my campers, and they became well conditioned (Shout out to Pavlov). To me, these seem a little immature for my students but will those techniques work? I LOVE the energy that my students provide and I don't want to threaten it by invoking some sort of punishment when students start chatting.  I want to preserve my voice and the energy of the class.

I'm curious to hear what others do in terms of bringing the class attention back on you!