Growing the Extra Mile

Last week, I was fortunate enough to teach my first official lesson at Biglerville! It was a LifeKnowledge lesson, adapted from the Educator Resources Section from the National FFA Website. For this lesson, I chose to teach the lesson on S.M.A.R.T. goals to a class of 12 9th graders. Overall, this lesson went really well, however, from these 48 minutes alone, I learned so many things. In this blog post, I will be sharing the main takeaways that I gained from teaching this LifeKnowledge lesson.  Always remember the power of close proximity.      One things that I really struggled with during my LifeKnowledge lesson was that, when students were working in groups, they would often get off task if I was not right next to them. Obviously, it is nearly impossible to be beside every group of students all the time. However, I did notice that many of the issues I was seeing significantly decreased if I was consistently staying within close proximity of each of the groups. In ...

It is crazy to think that we are this far into the semester already! So many great opportunities have been taking place in the past few weeks, and this week was no exception! This week, I had the opportunity to participate in a "microteaching" experience at State College Area High School. This experience consisted of 1 day of observing the class that we would be teaching and three days of actually teaching a mini unit that we designed.  For this experience, I was teaching a Natural Resources class that was currently in a Forestry Unit, so I decided to teach timber measurements as this related closely to what the class was already learning. While I am not a forestry expert, this teaching experience was great way to stretch out of my comfort zone, teaching content that I am not 100% familiar with to a group of actual high school students. Throughout this blog post, I want to highlight some of my biggest takeaways from this experience.  Always prepare for cold weather.  Havi...

     It is crazy to think that we are less than 40 days away from our final presentations! As we gear up for our student teaching experience, we have had so many great opportunities to grow as future educators by participating in experiences such as National FFA Convention, microteaching, and the Agriscience Inquiry Institute.      The Agriscience Inquiry Institute was a two day professional development event in which the PSU Ag Ed '24 cohort and 8 preservice educators came together to do a deep dive into inquiry based instruction. Inquiry based instruction is a student-centered approach in which the instructor guides students through activities that encourage them to ask question, develop methods, analyze data, and make real world connections.  We has the opportunity to learn from two phenomenal educators, Sherisa Nailor and Krista Pontius, who are also workshop leaders for the National Association of Agricultural Educators (NAAE). They walked us...

     This week in AEE 412, we discussed Culturally Responsive Teaching and how important it is to be culturally responsive in the classroom. This consisted of a "Main Idea Monday" focusing on individual discussions of our "whys" and hearing stories of seasoned educators who have done a great job of incorporating Culturally Responsive Teaching within their classrooms. We also had the opportunity to attend The Batschelet Conference on Intercultural and Intersectional Competence for School Learners which was held in State College this week. Both of these experiences were very impactful as a preservice educator who strives to ensure that all students are welcome within my classroom.      One of the biggest takeaways from class on Monday was the idea that I need to find my 'why'. For many people, their 'why' comes from personal reasons that are related to family or close friends. For me, I think my 'why' comes from some of my close friends and als...