From the Emblem of Washington

On Monday, October 5th, Mr. Matthew Holt (#psuaged16), Mr. Matthew Snyder (#psuaged17), and
myself took on a group of 19 new FFA Chapter Treasurers to show them the ropes on becoming successful during their role as officer.

We arrived early on the sunny Monday morning at the Blair County Convention Center to prepare ourselves for the arrival of the FFA members. Now, I have never attended Fall Leadership Conference (FLC) before, but I did know the basics as to what the students were to get out of the workshop.

Now, prior to FLC, we spent quite a bit of time in working on our lesson plan, gathering materials, and mentally preparing ourselves for the big day. There were some things that went well and some thing that, of course, could be improved on.

What Happened?

Sure enough, we could have thought of a more engaging first activity besides a Do Now 'Bellringer' type question, but it was early in the morning and we wanted to get these kids thinking. After greeting them at the door, we posed the question, "Who is one person you consider to be a good leader, and why?" We gave them close to two minutes to answer and share amongst the other officers in the room.

We had activities from drawing their own leader, to identifying receipts vs. disbursements through a kinesthetic ball activity, to even giving a mock Treasurer's Report and learning how to write a check. Soon enough, we realized that we were flying right through our lesson plan, and that we were going to run out of activities well before it was time to release the students.

How Did We Handle This?

As Mr. Holt was conducting one of this last activities, I did a little brainstorming. I ended up adding two more interactive activities. The students ended up creating an acronym for the word, "Treasurer". They had to come up with words that, obviously, related to their roles as the Treasurer and to keep it appropriate. The second filler activity I came up with was to build a roadmap. The roadmap had a 'Start' point, a long twisting and turning 'road', and a 'Finish' line. The 'Start' point was labelled 'Accepting the Role as Treasurer' and the students needed to identify the many different steps in order to get to the 'Finish' line (which was marked on our road as 'Success').

Also, we were talking about being the best officer during our Reflection Sandwich activity, and the kids were not excited about it at all. So We told them that the officer team themselves all create a sandwich. If they work hard enough, they will Be the Bacon on that sandwich. They absolutely loved that! Being that it was so close to lunch, the students reflected on how they can be better than the cheese and the tomato. Nothing is better than bacon!

How Can We Improve?

If I were given a re-do on this entire conference, there is quite a bit that I would change. I would definitely work more on communication with our shadow teacher; despite the fact that he did a great job throughout the workshop, I would have liked to get to know his teaching style and his comfort level in front of a 'class' prior to the day of FLC.

I would also re-write our entire lesson plan. It crossed my mind just a few days before FLC that we may have been cutting it close with lack of enough activities. I would have felt much more comfortable in creating a lesson plan with too many activities on it rather than not enough.

Well, I guess that we all live and learn. This leadership conference was definitely an experience to learn from. Let us hope that the next one is better.

The First (of Many) Unit Plans

For my very first unit, I thought to myself "Should I design my very first unit on a certain area that I am knowledgeable or where I need more practice?" I then decided to make my first unit with content that I am familiar with, so that I will be able to fill in the plan easily while still learning what actually goes into the unit plan.

So which unit did I choose?

Quality Assurance

I was very excited when Mr. Campbell (Ag Teacher at Derry High School) told me that he wanted me to teach this in four (out of the eight) classes that I will be teaching.

As a 4-H leader, I have to give Good Production Practice (GPP) training to all of my club members every year prior to the county round-up. GPP used to be known as Quality Assurance training, but has since been renamed since around 2013. I have also taken 8 years of Quality Assurance training myself as I was a 4-H member for just that long.

Being that I am only given 10 days to teach this unit to nearly 80 students, I wanted the content to be precise and able to get the message of Quality Assurance known to the students. I am a strong believer in good ethics and sportsmanship, and there is no better way to spread that through Quality Assurance.

The most challenging part in creating this unit was being able to cut enough information down to where it fits in just 10 days of instruction. From understanding how to give different types of injections, to proper housing, to disease awareness, there is simply a lot of information to cover in this subject area.

I plan on creating my next unit on one of the subjects I am not as familiar with, swine. I am kind of excited but a wee bit nervous in creating it. Any suggestions for activities during a three week swine unit will surely be welcome!

Technology Reading Reflection

Many thoughts are racing through my mind as I watch the videos in preparation of our #TeachAg Genius project.

As someone who is about to start student teaching in a few short months, I wonder to myself if I will ever have an impact on my students enough that they will remember beyond the classroom. I want my students to know that they have the power to achieve anything as far and as high they deem possible. Just because we do not have a horizontal driver's license does not mean that we do not understand what is going on around us.

I was truly inspired by Angela Maiers speaking on how two simple words can change lives. What are those two words, you might ask? You Matter. Maiers spoke on how many people throughout their lives feel as though they are unnoticed or that they do not matter to others. The power of noticing is so extreme and has such an impact on others. As a future educator, I hope to have some sort of an impact on my students to make sure that they all get noticed; to make sure that they make sure that they know "You Matter".

One thing I absolutely hated throughout school was being so bench pressed for time in mastering a skill. As soon as I learned that Pythagorean Theorem, I was not taught how it applied in real-life before we moved on to another formula . Dr. Tae spoke some very true words as,

All of us can share and teach. It is our responsibility to distribute and share what we know. We can all be great teachers; we can share our knowledge freely and really change our world. Knowledge should not be selfish. Teaching and learning are part of our cultural habits. They should not just be something we do in school.

How can we have our students wanting to come back every day? How can we create lessons that will make us lock our doors to keep others out? How can we make such an impact? How can we tweak our teaching to make it the best?