It's In My Nature

And just like that... Today is the final day of student teaching. I can't believe it. This semester has flown by and has taken a turn that I never could have imagined. I never would have thought that this would be the way student teaching would end. Although, through these unfortunate times, I have grown even more as an educator and learned so many more great things through distance learning. There has been an overwhelming number of resources that has been shared and I can't wait to use them in the future. Student teaching was not like anything I could have expected. Going into this, there are so many fears and concerns. So many questions. But all of that worrying and stress was for nothing. This was an amazing experience. Yes, there were many challenges and stresses for preparing the right lesson and planning for the next week. But it was all worth it. I might not have been able to teach all of the lessons and units I wanted, but that's okay! All of the time and energy t...

I was able to participate in the western regional PAAE meeting last night. This meeting looked different then what it was supposed to look like due to COVID-19. But, it was still very beneficial. I enjoyed listening to all of the different Ag teachers talk about their role in PAAE and in their region. Everyone comes together as Ag educators and dedicates even more time to making this community better and stronger. As much as I would have enjoyed seeing and meeting all of these western Ag teachers in person, the Zoom meeting was a good alternative. There are a lot of different things that I think PAAE does really well at. All of the committees and subcommittees seem to work great with one another and really accomplish a lot. The organization is impressive. I also think it is really cool how supportive Penn State's Center For Professional Development is in supporting the Ag Teachers of Pennsylvania. The western region has some great leaders in Ag Education. The term "West is t...

Before this pandemic began, I was supposed to visit Jess Barnhart at Brockway High School at the end of March. One day I was going to visit her and the next day she was going to visit me. Penn State makes the student teachers go and visit other schools to see what other student teachers are doing and to see other programs. This is actually a great idea because of how diverse Ag Ed really is. Every program in the state is different from the program size, to the FFA chapter, SAE's, and even the facilities and classes offered. Visiting other schools and teachers helps to see how other things are done and can spark ideas so that you can take those ideas back to your school. Sometimes even adding to your list of "The Dream Program". Last year, when I was looking for cooperating schools to complete my student teaching, I actually toured Brockway High School. Brockway has a really cool program with Mr. Holt and Mr. Norm. This two teacher program is definitely a little differen...

With these strange times, continuing to monitor SAE projects and conducting visits can be challenging. Especially simply engaging with the students. I was supposed to participate in a second SAE visit but COVID-19 happened. This caused me to have to do my second SAE visit virtually. Definitely a different experience but it is helpful to have great students with great projects. During this time and the school standards, SAE projects can't be mandatory. But I am impressed by how many students are still actively doing their projects and keeping accurate records on AET. The records look great. Most students are keeping daily logs. Maybe start inforcing students to post daily pictures and this could fill in for an SAE visit? Overall, it's amazing as if this pandemic hasn't impacted their projects at all. In fact, it has helped some of the students get caught up in records and journal entries. Even though student teaching is ending here soon, thinking ahead, what is going...

It is hard to believe that there is only one more week of student teaching. It's weird. Where has the time gone? It's amazing everything that has happened in the last 15 weeks. I don't even know if I could define what student teaching really is at the moment? These are crazy times and this situation was by no means expected. But this experience has given me a lot of opportunities to become more well-rounded as an educator. My teaching toolbox has grown tremendously. The amount of online resources that I have discovered during this time is amazing. There is so much out there. Maybe that is the best part of this COVID-19 epidemic. People have been putting more resources online and sharing their resources with teachers than ever before. I am not only gaining all of these resources to use now and in the future classroom, but I am also learning along the way too. The best thing that I have done this last week is to engage in professional development through Zoom. There have ...

Many times in high school classrooms, students feel that their hard work on long in-depth research projects can sometimes go unnoticed. Yes, their teacher reviews the project after the due date but once that project is graded. Then what?  Most projects are forgotten about. Students can see that. Spending weeks working on an in-depth project only for it to be forgotten about as the unit ends. The majority of the time, students are doing really cool projects in the classroom but what is that connection? How can students see the value in their projects long after the due date? By connecting their projects and course curriculum to Citizen Science Projects. What is Citizen Science?  Citizen Science is where any person with any background can participate in real-world research projects through observations, collecting data, communication, and/or collaboration. There are a large number of research projects around the world that are looking for dedicated individuals who share their...

This week of student teaching is proving to be another valuable learning experience. This online and distance learning can be challenging and the time it takes to prepare lessons that can be accommodating for all can be very time-consuming. But when these lessons are not required by the school and yet, students still log on to do the assignments, definitely make the time commitment worth it. Since COVID-19 was not planned for or expected, student teachers everywhere are missing out on valuable experiences. Penn State has created alternative assignments for us to complete over the next few weeks until our student teaching internship is over. These assignments are an addition to still providing online learning for our students. Some of my alternative assignments that my cooperating teacher, university supervisor, I have come up with are a lot of professional development. Pursuing professional development learning certificates like Google Classroom and Project Learning Tree. I am also tak...

As I have been reading different articles from all over, a lot of schools are doing enrichment activities. But these activities seem like they can be and sometimes are busywork. We can't teach new content, lessons can only be 20 minutes long, assignments can't be graded, and they have to be relatable to what the students have already learned. This can be hard to still make learning fun under those guidelines. I created some really cool lessons for the first week of Conneaut Area's enrichment lessons. The only thing is, I hope the students actually participate since they are not graded.  Ag 1: We are in the middle of our wildlife unit and the students just learned about ecological principles in ecosystems. To show some of the different ecosystems and environments that the students have never seen before, we are going to explore Googles, The Hidden Worlds of the National Parks . These are virtual interactive tours of 5 different National Parks with all kinds of cool thing...

There has never been an event similar to this in our lives. Never would I have thought that a virus could really shut down the nation and almost the entire world. As all Americans are stuck at home, self-distancing themselves, I want everyone to know something. Just because we are in quarantine, doesn't mean learning stops! Students and families can set goals each and every single day to learn something new! Be sure to share it with not only your loved ones but share it with your social media. If you're an indoor person, then, stay inside and just google something you're interested in. We have the power of knowledge, history, content, and the world at the touch of our fingertips. So use it! If you are an outdoors person, go outside and explore everything nature has to offer. Spring is quickly approaching and the woods are alive. The PA Department of Health posted this picture on their Facebook this week. It's okay to go outside and explore! I have been going out...

Wow! This is definitely a unique situation and was not at all planned. If you would have told me in January that all schools in the state would close for a 2-week period, I would have laughed at you. I still can't believe what is happening and to quickly reflect on this, I am kind of frustrated. If you ask me, it would have made a lot more sense for the schools to have stayed open until Monday for kids to grab any materials from school and for the teachers to give out work to do. But unfortunately, that did not happen. I could have come up with projects for every class to do while they are on this break but that did not happen. Now, my students are not responsible for anything over the next two weeks. This is definitely frustrating looking at the long term plan and goal of student teaching and lesson planning. Trying to look ahead and start planning is so hard because we don't know when we will be allowed back. The goal is March 30th and I sure hope that can happen. With stud...

Another great week in the books! We accomplished a lot of cool things this week! Now that I have a full load of courses, I am starting to see how many moving parts there really are. It can quickly be overwhelming. I feel like all that I am ever doing is planning. Planning for tomorrow, the rest of the week and even next week. It adds up quick and can prove to be challenging trying to stay ahead of it. In Ag Science, we learned about the United Nations Sustainable Develepolement Goals and how they relate to us. Then we created word clouds that showcased which goals were most important to us as a class. Then, we went through each goal, looked at them from a local scale to a national scale to a global scale. This was really cool to see the students have the same beliefs and interests. Really being able to see that common interest of food security and being able to connect that back to the unit. Ag 2, we were talking about pesticide residues and looked at how they can quickl...

Wow! This week was extremely exhausting but also so rewarding! National FFA Week was a huge success at CASH! The amount of participation from so many different students made the week totally worth the effort. From taking pies to the face and wearing orange for #KindlerStrong or just an ordinary school day with our students being proud to wear their official dress. Words can not express how much fun and how proud I am of all of these students in this program. We started our week as Camo and Flannel Monday! So many students participated along with so many teachers in the school who really support CASH FFA. That night we tie-dyed shirts because Friday was tie-dye day! We stayed after school, played music and just had fun! Tuesday was official dress! The students wore their blue corduroy jackets to school. It was so cool seeing all of the FFA jackets throughout the school building. That night, we went to the Meadville Hoss's to have dinner with other local chapters ...

Another week in the books! I can't believe how fast this process is going. There are just so many great different things going on. Some of the coolest parts are seeing the student's passion for supporting the program. We have a former student who graduated last year and she is battling leukemia. To support her we have been selling these shirts as a fundraiser and I am still just blown away by the support! We sold over 250 of these shirts! The plan is to have everyone wear them on Wednesday during National FFA Week. I can't wait to see the sea of orange throughout the school next week. Thinking about those words, "Stronger Together" has got me thinking. This student teaching process isn't possible without leaning on those closes to you and going towards your mentors for guidance. Taking advantage of these resources makes you stronger. Not only as a teacher but just simply as a person. I have a tremendous team around me consisting of my cohort members, f...