Week 9: Building the Village

The common phrase I hear as a parent is, "it takes a village to raise a child." This statement is one of the only phrases that actually makes sense to me when raising kids. My step daughter is lucky to have 4 parents who love her plus all of our family in her village to help her be successful.

In a school it takes several teacher and departments to come together for the students to be successful. This week I got to see this idea laid out in my building and class perfectly!

What did I teach?

Mini THON '20

 Introduction to Agriculture: This week we wrapped up plant science and moved into the agronomy unit. So far we have looked at what agronomy is, what crops are grown in the North East and what sustainable agriculture is using Journey 2050.


Current Topics in Agriculture: This week we continued our vet science unit by looking at medications, meeting our new pigs and having an artificial insemination demo/practice from a local company, Select Sires.

Mini THON

Being involved in clubs/organizations at the High School I teach at is important to me and to my students. I decided to be a chaperon for the Conrad Weiser Mini THON. I spent from 12 am to 6 am on my feet with several students in my classes. I played volleyball, colored pictures, played corn hole and kept several tired freshman awake till the end. Our school raised over $26,000 for Penn State's THON.

What did I learn?

It takes a village: Teachers cannot be separated into departments in the building. We are all seeing the same students so, we need to work together to enhance their experience in school.

What do I mean by this? I mean is that the students in my class do not only take agriculture. They take science, math and english classes too so, I need to connect with those teachers to get to know the students better/build a support system for the students.

For me, I did this through going to Mini THON and as a group we rallied around the students when they were tired and sore.

Suturing bananas in Current Topics

Incorporate others into your program: My program is not the 7 rooms of my agriculture department at Conrad Weiser. My program includes other departments in and out of the school.

The cafeteria staff is saving food scraps for my two agriculture teaching assistants to feed to the pigs. This gave me a great outlet to talk about food waste in our country, pig nutrition and solved the issue of buying pig feed. When we went to the elementary schools for FFA Week we brought students from the photograph and film classes with us to get hands on
experience recording an event.

We all need to work together to find outlets for our students to connect their passions in the building to other things going on. The students who came with us to the elementary school were not students in my class currently but, students Mr.Serfass thought should have the opportunity to gets hands on experience with their passion of videography. We became their client and they were filming for our event. We ended up getting a promotional video and they got practice working for a client.

Pairing with local businesses: I am not an expert by any means in all things agriculture. That would be impossible. It is important to know when you should step back and invite someone into your class to assist you in teaching something. I invited a representative from Select Sires into my class to demonstrate (and allow students to perform) artificial insemination on a dairy reproduction track. The students were engaged, asking questions about careers and gained so much more than I could have given them. Finding these opportunities increases the quality of my class from time to time.

Goals for next week?

1. Increase student engagement- This week I will be using popsicle sticks to choose students to answer questions. I feel at times I am always calling on the same students and hope if I start randomly selecting students it will increase participation at times.

2. Create stronger interest approaches- Sometimes my interest approaches are not as catching as I would like. I have looked for some resources to help assist me with this!

Questions:

Artificial Insemination with Select Sires

1. How are some way you alert students they are in jeopardy of failing the marking period that will motivate them to either do better next time or submit missing assignments?

2. How do you hold students accountable for their FFA CDE team practices?
I know our students have a ton going on and are split in several different places but, I am struggling to have students attend a practice for a contest that is a week and a half away.

3. How do you set up your lessons for a whole week you will be out? What do you have them working on? Is this a good place for a unit project/FFA exploration?

I am at a point where I have written sub plans several times now, but never for a whole week. My self and Mr.Serfass will be out for 3 days in the upcoming weeks. The only 2 days he will be there has a half day schedule so, we won't be even seeing all the classes.