National FFA Convention & Expo

My Travels with Grassland FFA

Dover FFA was unable to make the annual "pilgrimage to mecca" (National FFA Convention & Expo) so I paired up with my virtual mentor Mrs. Ranck and her program. Grassland FFA and Pequea Valley FFA traveled together, departing Tuesday Morning and Returning Saturday Night. 

• Touring WVU - This was a college visit on the way out to convention, it is a feasible option for students interesting in going to college and the students enjoyed the break in travel.
• Touring Indianapolis Speedway - Students that enjoyed Ag Mechanics really enjoyed this visit, and because it is a popular tourist destination other students engaged in the tour as well.
• Spending four hours in the expo - As I reflected with students they stated that they had wished they had been more productive with their time. They loved exploring for that long of time, although they wished they had made better use since they under estimated the amount of things to do and see. 
• Opening Session - We opted out of the Garth Concert and went to the Wednesday Night welcome session. The students were blow away by the laser show, the professionalism of the National FFA President, and the keynote speaker.
• Traveling to Louisville - A 2 hour drive took us south to visit other landmark stops that our Advisors discovered when the convention was in Louisville. I'd say it was worth the drive. 
• Touring Churchill Downs - Of course our horse girls were beyond excited, although the museum was extremely interactive and the tour had many fun facts for our other student that everyone was happy for the experience. As an Educator I adored the application to not only animal science, but soil science, agribusiness, and even floriculture.
• Touring Louisville Slugger Museum - Our sports guys on the trip greatly enjoyed this stop, and everyone got a mini-bat with the tour, whats not to love? Again as an educator I loved the application to Forestry, Sustainable Ag, Ag Mechanics, and Agribusiness.
• Touring FFA - CST Corteva - this tour was HEAVY with science. The tour was excellently put together and the facilities are amazing, although the biology and chemistry of their agriscience center may have been overwhelming for some of the students. Regardless, their now know more of the endless opportunities in agriculture!
• Touring FFA - CST Lawson Cattle Facility - This windy and rainy stop was worth stopping for because the students learned about animal science and diversified agriculture. 
• Session 7 - Students were influenced by the story of the National FFA Secretary during her tear-jerking, and inspirational retiring address as well as being inspired by the keynote speaker!

Driving home I was able to reflect on the things I loved about our trip, things I may change for my future program's trips, and how I would describe the worth of the trip to my administration. I am beyond thankful for the opportunity to learn from Mrs. Ranck, Mrs. Van Sant, and Mrs. Masser. 

My Professional Development Workshop

On Wednesday I participated in the AFBF Purple Plow workshop to learn about their free resources for Problem-Based Learning. 

My Take Aways:

1. Purpleplow.org is a STEM solutions website to aid teachers in problem-based learning. 
2. Puzzlers are great for 1-2.5 hours, therefore they would be great for utilizing over a day or two in the classroom. 
3. Challenges are semester long explorations that teachers enter into online, obtain the resources, students go through the problem solving process, and then submit their results to AFBF for a chance to win a 3D printer or VISA gift cards.
4. All resources are found at http://www.purpleplow.org/

Interviewing Teachers

I had the opportunity throughout the trip to interview three teachers (Mrs. Knapp from Wisconsin, Mr. Renshaw from Georgia, and Ms. Ward from New Hampshire) from three different states with the following questions.

 

1) When we leave on a field trip/FFA event, what are the rest of our learners doing? 

• Students complete online work so the teacher can hold them accountable for working in class.
• Students watch National Convention Sessions either live-stream or saved sessions. 
• Students work on large, complex projects that would be presented when the teacher would get back.

2) Do we approach FFA as an instructional tool or as a club? 

• All three said it is a hybrid of both. The FFA is more than a club, although it is not pure instruction, there is social implications and non-academic learning occurring in the FFA. 

3) How have made sure purposeful, intentional and explicit learning occurs? 

• Students come if they qualify for a CDE (the CDE is used as an extension of classes they may have been in)
• Students have assigned tasks they must complete such as attending a student workshop.
• Students plan their trip with learning opportunities in mind, then the teacher reviews the plans to adapt them as needed to accommodate travel time, budgets, and administrative approval. 

The Substitute Lesson

Prior to #PSUAgEd19 travelling to The National FFA Convention in Indianapolis, Indiana we had to experience planning for a substitute teacher since we would be gone from class with our students!

What We Did:

On Monday each member drew three cards from the AFNR standards and selected one card that they would most like to develop a "substitute quality lesson plan" for. 

On Wednesday we were surprised when Ms. Morey told us we would have to exchange lesson plans with another student in Lab. We were given 10 minutes to review each others lessons and expectations and that was all. 

How it went:

I was paired with Sara Lang, who had a lesson on blind spots, flight zones, and livestock handling for the substitute to give. During the 10 minutes I asked clarification questions and gathered the materials she would have left behind for the sub to use. 

I got up, winged some of it, but overall it was an easy lesson plan to follow. The students were engaged and learned the content explained to them.

Overall, the process was less stressful than I thought it would be. I attribute this to the fact that all students in class are Ag Education majors, in real life you could get a retired English teacher for your sub that doesn't have an Ag experience what-so-ever. That I what scared me the most because they would have the content knowledge to educate the students.

What is your real-world advice for planning for a sub teacher?

I have brainstormed ideas like having students know that when a sub is in they have a UPS/Fedex Day. (they can do anything they want as long as they deliver in one day, pertaining to the content being covered in class)

In my past I've seen teachers simply show documentaries all class, but this doesn't seem engaging and motivating for students.

What are your thoughts?

Weekly Investment #9

Is Our Toolbox Full?

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We've been given a plethora of teaching techniques to utilize in our spring classes. How I plan to implement them in the fall is essentially up to me, but why would I not follow in the footsteps of great thinkers and educators?

Differentiated Instruction:

When a teacher is teaching to multiple intelligence, most of the time they will be able to achieve some differentiated instruction techniques. DI can be used in all areas of education, and is particularly useful in agriculture education, because after all our students won't be listening to lecture and taking tests in the workforce. They will be working in collaboration with others, utilizing psychomotor skills, rationalizing and synthesizing factors, and truly working within the problem solving mindset. 

How I can Utilize Individual Teaching Techniques in the Spring:

1. Teach how my students will learn.
2. Assess in ways my students will best show off their work, this can mean multiple options for assessments.
3. Tailor supervised studies to meet students interest and teach cognitive and affective learning.
4. Leverage interest in experimenting.
5. Independent Study is fabricated by the student, in a way that best meets their learning styles and interests, minimal teacher influence is needed but supervision is still provided.
6. Student notebooks, different from notes they write in class, can be a reflection tool for them to synthesize knowledge in their own way, that they have learned. 

Virtual Mentor Exploration #2

"What strategies or resources do you use to help your class/program be responsive to cultural diversity and English Language Learners?"

The FFA and agriculture education have had a consistent struggle with achieving cultural diversity in their classrooms and chapters. Ultimately your program should reflect the community which you live in, and my awesome virtual mentorship team provided some feedback for me to look into when achieving cultural diversity in my classroom and accommodating ELL students. 

Big Take Aways:

1. Providing Spanish FFA Documents such as the manual and other resources to Spanish speaking students often makes them feel included.
2. Attending Professional Development events regarding ELL and Cultural Diversity is valuable.
3. The "We Are FFA" and "Somos FFA" movements were apart of a large launch for National FFA to create more diverse resources for students. 
4. Cultural Diversity and Acceptance of ELL students is ultimately up to the leadership, membership, advisors, chapters, and supporters.

After the conversations I had with my mentorship team, I am excited to start including culturally diverse members into my program!

PS: MY MENTORSHIP TEAM IS AWESOME!

Weekly Investment #8

How do Teachers assess and evaluate?

Assessments and Evaluations of learning are a critical component for teachers to have in their classrooms. Not only is this tool for teachers to evidence learning in their classroom for reporting, but it is a way to gauge if your students truly accomplished the objectives set forth in your lessons. 

These assessments are given in two ways. One way is formative assessments, which are "temperature checks" throughout the lesson and learning process to gauge your students progress in learning. Another method is summative assessments, which are completed with a pre- and post-assessments before and after a lesson, unit, or course. 

These two methods are to be used with every lesson, unit and course your teach consistently. One cannot fully replace the other, because they serve very different tasks. 

How can I assess students in a laboratory?

Tests can be hard to implement for laboratory/shop work in agriculture. One of our readings had great examples of various methods of mapping out concepts learned that foster student creativity while assessing their learning. 

 

                           Brace Map                                                          Concept Map

 

                              Flow Chart                                                      Student Portfolio

Maintaining Clarity in Assessments:

As you well know, a critical part of assessments and evaluations is clarity. This comes in the form of rubrics. Ideally, the rubric would be given with the instructions for the assignment and would have the following characteristics:

• A list of criteria for the assessment
• A point value for each criteria for students to identify key components of the assignment
• Enough freedom to foster student autonomy or creativity
• A matrix which correlates students' actions to a specific point value.

FEEDBACK WANTED:

How can teachers incorporate peer-review ans self-graded assessments into our evaluation process without introducing social bias?

Reflection on the Problem Solving Lab

Problem Solving Instruction

BeMy goals and aspirations for problem solving instruction were somewhat met. I had successfully asked an mildly interesting question which posed a problem for my students. Although my lesson quickly fell apart for several reasons.

1. The lesson was following the unit on "Tragedy of the Commons" and was fairly content heavy. Therefore, my lab-mates that were unfamiliar with the tragedy could not interact with the lesson the way a student would if they had been in class for the unit.
2. I had wrongly thought I needed to show the resolution to the problem in my 20 minute Edthena video; Therefore I cut a large chunk of problem solving time out. THIS WAS SO WRONG.
3. My students lost the original big picture problem about half way through my lesson because I have been asking several smaller questions that were causing them to think a bit off track.

Giving myself some credit, even though I think I failed:

1. I understand, the lesson would have gone better with students that had content knowledge.
2. I understand, I do not need to show a resolution within 20 minutes of posing the problem.
3. I understand, other questions that you stumble upon can be welcomed as long as the provoke thought and you can still steer back to the original problem.
4. Writing the original, big-picture problem on a board for students to reference would help with clarity. (BECOV IS LIFE)
5. I am handling student discipline issues well in class, I had a student make a rude comment and quickly and simply nipped the problem without drawing extra attention from other students. This allowed me to defend the student being picked on and demonstrate expectations and consequences in class. 

In Summary:

Problem-solving instruction is tricky, but is one of the best ways to get students engaged and thinking. By posing a problem, we easily identify the "why" in student learning. 

I realize I would nail all my labs on the first try, I know where I messed up and I know where I can fix these mistakes. I look forward to practicing and getting better at problem solving instruction!