FFA Week!

Students preparing the teacher breakfast to kick off FFA Week!

My 7th week of student teaching has come and gone faster than I could've imagined. With #FFAweek this week it went by so quickly because there was always something going on! I've had the chance to reflect on how this experience has been going even with all of the craziness in the ag room!

Positives this week:
As time goes on I get closer and closer with students which has made this experience especially rewarding. I didn't even realize how happy I was getting to know this students until I was driving in my car and I started smiling as I was thinking about how much fun students were having out the FFA meeting/movie this week. Smiling like a dweeb in my car made me realize that these students are having quite the impact on me! I hope that I have been making a positive impact on them as well. More related to teaching, another positive this week was a successful lesson. My Natural Resource class comprises of 6 rambunctious teenage boys. I had them participate in a bird beak activity where they had different shaped "beaks" or utensils in this case and had to pick up food. I provided candies for them to pick up with their tools and it could've gone horribly wrong. I imagined the possibility of them getting too competitive and whipping candy around the classroom, but they were excited and responsible at the same time!

Points of Improvement:
This week I realized that I really want to work on my preparation. I have had multiple lessons that I was last minute getting supplies for or setting up. I've had a hard time keeping up with the day to day lesson prep, but I do feel like I'm getting better. With all these classes I want to make sure that I'm prepared so the students get the educational experience they deserve!

What happened to week 6?!

My sixth week of student teaching was more "off" than "on" in reference to days in school. We had a great weekend at ACES and had an already planned Monday off. I experienced my first snow day Tuesday (even though I went in anyway!) and #psuaged16 reunited on Friday which meant I only had 2 days of teaching this week! Even in just 2 days, I was forced to reflect heavily on how I've been running a few of my classes.


Points of improvement:

I learned this week that I've been too nice to some of my classes. Almost all of their grades have been in-class assignments like guided notes or worksheets that they have been given full credit if they hand them in. Although these are not bad to have, there must be variety and I have been lacking with that. I realized that I'm not pushing them to really learn and grow in their academics. To fix this I will be focusing on varied assignments as well as grading some of their assignments on accuracy and not just completion like they mostly have. Being nice is great, but my main goal as a teacher is to maximize their learning and they are not giving me the effort that I want... Since I can not change their actions I must change mine! Putting more emphasis on the importance of hard work and learning (instead of just getting it done) I think I can encourage them to work hard and earn their grades.


Positives:

Picking up my Ag Leadership course has been the most excited I have been since starting student teaching. I find that this class has such a positive environment and students are willing to do their work. I have been getting them excited about Public Speaking with fun activities and bellower such as playing simon says and saying tongue twisters. The first assignment these students did were impromptu speeches where they only prepared for 15 seconds and spoke for a minute. Students were nervous, but everyone felt comfortable enough to do it and were laughing and engaging in their peers stories. I hope that I can continue the trend with this class because right now they have showed me that they can work hard, be productive, but have fun at the same time and this is exactly what I want their learning to be about!

Happy FFA week to everyone out there! Check in to hear about some awesome things @WellsboroAg is doing to celebrate!

SAE Visit #2 - Entrepreneurship

The Wellsboro Agriscience department has opened my eyes to a whole world of agricultural education. I had the opportunity to visit another successful student and his SAE project. One thing I love about Wellsboro - you can stop at the local feed store on the way to an SAE visit and end up "visiting" 3 students at their SAE project. Such a fun trip to basically visit 4 SAE projects in one day whether you mean to or not!

Back to the SAE visit on purpose - tonight we visited an active FFA member who plans on showing animals at the fair. With how active this student is, there's no limit to what he takes on. He's had experience with pigs and this year decided to try his luck with some beef animals. His SAE would be considered an entrepreneurship (there are 4 total types - research, exploratory, and placement are the others) since he has purchased these animals to show at the fair. He is putting in the time to prepare these animals for fair and feeding/caring for them throughout this process. At the end of this project he would ideally make money from his project when he sells his animals at the fair.

It is great seeing the different projects students get involved in and how they use their resources. This student doesn't live on a farm so uses family properties to keep his animals for the most part. The steer he's using for his project are actually staying inside a dairy farm that his grandfather runs. It was such an experience to walk down the center aisle looking at all the dairy cows and all of a sudden see some giant beef animals at the end.

We asked various questions including his goals, improvements, and what he still needs to work on regarding this project. His mother was also there for the visit so sometimes she shared the information and pushed him to look deeper at his tasks. He sometimes runs into issues with getting to this barn to work with the animals so realizes he needs to start coming more regularly. I love seeing how students can develop and evaluate their goals! I hope to see him with his animals at the Tioga County Fair in the summer!

@WellsboroAg takes on #FFAces16!

Opening Ceremonies

 On February 13th and 14th, the Grand Canyon FFA and about 500 other FFA members from around the state attended the second weekend of the Agricultural Cooperation Establishes Success (ACES) Conference. This conference focuses on enhancing students leadership, team work, and social skills so they can develop personally and  utilize those skills to benefit their FFA chapters.

Workshop time!

It has been a very different experience for me than in the past. Although I never had the opportunity as a student, I travelled to ACES to present to students with other Penn State students and the State FFA officers. Although I had to prepare lessons for ACES in the past, being an advisor was a different level of being prepared. Being in charge of more than 30 students for an over-night trip is no easy task to conquer. I learned how essential it is to have everything organized including all the necessary forms and schedule planning. Luckily, this time around my cooperating teacher was there to guide the process. It was nice seeing my students in a different environment and being an advisor in a different environment as well!

Breakfast - Rockin' the pink shirts!

In the past I had never stayed over for the second day so it was interesting to see more of what the students experience. My favorite part of the conference was the reflection put on by the state officers. Reflection is essential to grow - in any aspect of life! To see a reflection take place for these students was great. It was impressive to me that they could get a huge room of rowdy teenagers to be quiet and focus on what was going on. Although I'm not an FFA member, it really had me reflecting. I may have been reflecting on different things than the students were, but it really had me thinking about my student teaching process and what I want to accomplish before it's over.

It was a new experience seeing the students I have been encountering these last five weeks have so much fun while developing these new skills. I hope they got as much out of it as I thought they did... or as much as I got out of it!

SAE project visit - Placement

Although I visited 2 students over the Summer to see their SAE projects, this is the first SAE visit I had since I've been student teaching this semester. Mrs. Berndtson and I spent our Friday afternoon visiting student SAE projects! This particular student has a placement SAE where he works at a community dairy farm. He assists with various farm activities with his main role consisting of milking the cows (usually with another person).

The student sharing about his SAE project.

This particular student is a very outgoing and dedicated worker. It was clear in how he talked about his duties, is willing to try anything, and how he interacted with his boss. Mrs. Berndtson doesn't have a set schedule for SAE visits, but tries to see as many students as possible. She admits that she just can't get to every student because it is a single teacher program with a lot of students. Because she can't see every student she doesn't give a grade for the visit itself.

Grades on student SAE consists of presentations and journal entries on theAET.com where she moderates how students are progressing. Students are required to have at least 5 hours in every month which she stresses to students is important because SAE should be a process - not working the yearly required hours in one month and finished. Although they don't have grades tied to the visit itself, she evaluates student progress.

SAE visits in Wellsboro consist of asking questions and getting students to set goals for their project. For this particular project, the questions consisted of the following:

• How many hours do you work?
• What kind of work activities have you been doing?
• What have you learned while working here?
• What do you hope to learn yet

With this project there was also various questions asked about the routines and what animal care is being done. The SAE visit is an important part of student development and really gets these students thinking about what they are doing and what they strive to accomplish.

Student Teaching Adventures... Week 5!

Natural Resources studying pelts, sounds, and prints of PA wildlife

The fifth week of student teaching has come to an end (sort of!). I should really say the classroom part has ended for the week, but my week is longer this week because of the excitement of ACES weekend. I write this as I think about what I need to pack to prepare for a few more days with Grand Canyon FFA members in Harrisburg. There have been some fun highlights of the week that make me excited to see how the rest of my experience will go.

I paid special attention to the Natural Resources class this week since I will start taking that class over next week. The subject matter is especially interesting to me (you may or may not know that I interned at the Carbon County Environmental Education Center), but the class seems to be more of a handful than I'm used to. They are not bad students in any way, just a very lively group of gentlemen that are always moving around and talking. I'm excited to have a small class in a subject area I like, but I will have to really stretch myself to make sure I can entertain these students!

Plant Science students designing a heart arrangement

Intro to Ag students designing a single rose arrangement for V-day

Many of the agriculture teachers (and student teachers) see this weekend as another weekend of ACES, but tend to almost forget that this weekend is Valentine's Day! Although I haven't started teaching Intro to Ag or Plant Science just yet (they're the last 2 classes I pick up!), I paid extra attention to their activities this week. To celebrate Valentine's, Mrs. Berndtson taught both classes briefly about floral design and allowed the Intro to Ag students to design a single rose arrangement while the Plant Science students designed a biedermeier heart out of carnations and other filler flowers. I will be teaching the floral design unit in Plant Science in a few weeks and paid attention to these activities because my experiences with plants and florals are limited. Students designing these florals was not only fun, engaging, and creative for students, but also showed just how important agriculture is. Some students might not realize the role agriculture has in some of these holidays!

Week 4 was a hit!

Students practiced subcutaneous and intramuscular injections

Student teaching is flying by and I (and the rest of #psuaged16) am already over a quarter of the way done. I feel as though every time I blink another day goes by!

This week I have been teaching 3 of the class periods and am teaching Animal Sciences I & II. With animal science being my favorite and most knowledgable topic, it has been great picking up these classes first. I don't need to focus too much on ensuring my understanding of the content and can completely focus on how my lessons are put together.

My highlights of the week including most of my Friday. Animal Science students had learned about diseases, vaccines, and related topics all week and were able to put their knowledge to the test with injections on Friday! Students were able to practice on bananas and oranges and then perform a subcutaneous and intramuscular injection on a banana for credit. Even with instructions (multiple times) on proper handling of syringes I still had a student poke herself with the syringe and need a bandaid. There were over 40 students that performed the lab, so I tried to look at the silver lining and realize about 42 students didn't run into any issues! I really think that with a lab like this that the preparation is worth it. They couldn't remember the names of injection sites from the day before, but performing the injections on  fruit helped them realize exactly how injections work.

Another highlight this Friday was my "field trip" to another classroom - this time a Chemistry class. I wanted to share (especially for my #psuaged16 cohort!) about one of her assignments. Students are assigned to work on a song related to the topic at hand using a song people are familiar with. Students had so much fun with the assignment and so proud of what they had accomplished. Most importantly, they now have those topics memorized! Learning can exist in various forms, and seeing her approach opened new doors for me! Of course at Penn State we were encouraged to appeal to multiple intelligences of students. I do not excel with musical and I have been struggling to appeal to that modality for students that can benefit from it. I'm thinking involving an assignment (with reflection like this teacher implemented) can really get students learning and being creative! Check out her one class video below (not the one I saw in class, but a past assignment):