Growing the Extra Mile

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...

 The Task Over the past two weeks, my peers and I have been preparing to deliver our "problem solving approaches" to our cohort in lab. The problem solving approach is a systematic way to approach real world problems that allows students to work to solve the problem. In 412, we learned 4 types of problem solving approaches, they are: the forked road problem, the possibilities factor problem, the solutions to be improved problem, and the effect-cause problem.  For this lab, I decided to add the situations to be improved problem into my global agriculture unit. The title of my lesson was "How can we address the four pillars of food security?". During this lesson, I would introduce students to the four pillars of food security and then ask them to determine while pillar of food security is being affected in a given scenario. After students identified what pillar was being affected, I would then have them create a plan for how they could help alleviate the problems with...

Hi everyone! It is crazy to think that we have officially made it 1/3 of the way through this semester. This semester has been, and will continue to be, filled with high-impact learning experiences that have helped me grow as a future educator. These experiences have kept me busy, however, I know that this will all serve me well in the future.  In Week 5 of AEE 412, we focused our lab experience on interest approaches. An interest approach is a brief activity, typically used at the beginning of a learning experience, to stimulate students' interest towards a topic. Interest approaches are a very important part of any lesson, however, for me, they can also be the most difficult.  For this lab, I decided to highlight the interest approach from lesson 7 of my Rabbit Production Unit, titled "What are common rabbit breeds?". This interest approach was an observation activity for my students. I had posted pictures of various rabbit breeds around the room and tasked students wit...

Hi everyone! I know what you're all probably thinking, "Why is Mckenzie talking about the first day of school when she's already in week four?". Well, that's because the first day is SUPER important in setting up your students and classroom for success. It is the first chance for you to set expectations and procedures in your classroom and for students to get a true sense of who you are as a teacher. As a preservice educator, it is very important to consider what I will do on the first day of class so that I get off on the right foot.  Lucky for me, this week in 412, we had the opportunity to create a lesson plan for what we would do on our first day of school and deliver 10 minutes worth of content from that plan in front of a group of our peers. I chose to create my first day lesson for the 9th grade ag sciences course that I will be teaching this spring. Follow along with this lab and I will take your through some of the post-lab reflections I had!  Making Lab ...

 Hi everyone! It has been a busy, yet rewarding first three and a half weeks of classes, but it feels so nice to finally be into the "groove" of what classes happen when and what is expect of me on a weekly basis. As we have been working through these first few weeks, we have also been working through our first large assignment. This assignment was for AEE412: Methods of Teaching Agriculture and was titled "Model Unit Plan". For this assignment, we were tasked with writing one unit plan and submitting it for two rounds of peer review.  I decided to write a unit plan titled "Exploring the Poultry Industry and Local Production Processes", which I will be teaching at Biglerville this spring during my student teaching experience. I chose to write this unit plan because it is a topic that I am somewhat comfortable teaching as far as content, but I felt as though there was still plenty of room for growth.  As I started unit planning, I found it to be a little ov...