Week 7: Embracing the "student" in student teacher

This week, I feel like I truly embraced the "student" role in my student teaching experience. With a variety of activities from mock interviews, to observing other programs, and serving as an advisor for an FFA meeting, this week flew by! For this week's blog, I am going to give a day-by-day flashback of my experiences throughout this week. Each day was very unique and different.

Monday: Mock Interviews

Our cohort returned to Happy Valley to complete some mock interviews in preparation for job applications. I must admit, going back to State College put me in a weird spot. State College has a special place in my heart and I was overjoyed to be back! I was excited to head back into the classroom for the rest of the week, but I know that I will look forward to return to campus for some additional classes next fall.

Tuesday: Visitation by Ms. Langdale

Erin, or as my students call her, Ms. Langdale, visited Oley Valley on Tuesday. She was able to see how I run the classes for NRM, biotech, and animal science. This week in animal science started a new unit on animal reproduction. To gain student's interest and create the "felt-need," students completed a pretest kahoot on the mammalian reproduction system. We were able to look around the school a little bit to see all that Oley has to offer for its students in the agricultural education program.

Wednesday: WB Saul School Visit

For my visit to another agricultural program, I decided to take a trip to Philadelphia and visit WB Saul. As an agricultural education program in an urban area, I was overwhelmed with the resources available to students and teachers. I enjoyed checking out the various animal facilities for student use and the extensive greenhouses and shop for plant science majors. I have an entire blog written about my WB Saul experience, so be sure to check that for more information.

Thursday: Another day in the classroom

Another day in the classroom is anything but boring. In my NRM classes, students performed a soil ribbon test and practiced their public speaking speeches in preparation for next week's competition. In biotech, we finished our ELISA test. Guess what, our results were positive! When I tried this lab in ag mechanics class at PSU, we did not follow the instructions clearly and our results were not as we expected. I was overjoyed when we were able to see which enzymes were present in our findings. Animal Science continued learning about the reproductive anatomy and hormone graphic organizer.

Friday: FFA Advisor in Training

I was able to act as an official FFA advisor during general member FFA meeting on Friday. The officer team lead the cafeteria full of students through a discussion on FFA Week, banquet, and ACES. I look forward to the next two FFA meetings that I will get to attend throughout my student teaching experience.

All in all, this week was a great experience! I loved learning about how other programs operate. Stepping back into the student role at Penn State was nice. I look forward to the remainder of my student teaching internship!