First day in my Cooperating Center... as a teacher!

Life Knowledge lessons are kind of fun and pretty easy to understand, but they won't be taught for the 6 weeks I will be the "teacher" at Wellsboro in the Spring :)
However, they did open my eyes to the field of resources for Ag Ed lesson plans! Don't forget the extensive list!**

So after 3 days of teaching at Central Mountain, I was able to sleep semi-well before driving into the great northern tier of PA for a couple of hours at Wellsboro Area High School.
Let me just first brag about my ag program... I love my kids already. They have a twitter handle (@wellsboroag) and my teacher is a CASE certified, national agriscience ambassador. They have some pretty cool resources (rabbit room, 3 greenhouses, forest lab, etc.) for being such a small program... and Wellsboro Ag Ed boasts about 20% of the school population. I think my high school ag program population was maybe 3% of the school population?
Anyways, with this already in mind, and knowing some of my students already, I was already excited to not have to walk into a completely new room and teach to a class of 30 crazy students (max 24 in my Wellsboro classes).
The LifeKnowledge lesson I chose was about being involved in all levels of the community. This was an especially exciting topic, as I got to listen to some of my students discuss the need to do more community service projects after a particularly enthralling National FFA Convention Session. It was so cool to be there, next to my cooperating teacher, as they started brainstorming in the van ride on the way back to the hotel :) One of those "I'm excited to teach" moments.

Anyways, back to the lab that I am supposed to be blogging on.
So I was able to do this lesson 2 times, mainly because the Ag Sci 1 and FFA/Leadership classes are back to back, and why not teach an extra class period? It was a cool concept, to be able to repeat a lesson, as it is something I will do in the spring with 2 sections of An Sc 2. I think it helps us, too, get into the reflective mindset of "okay, how did that go? did it go as I planned? what can be improved? did they gain something?" for ALL classes (not just repeats).
I really didn't have the same management problems with my students at Wellsboro as I did at Central Mountain. There were times in this particularly engaging lesson where students were unresponsive. Then again, they had probably never been asked to think about how to be engaged at the global community level before... so it was quite new to some of them. And even forcing them to think about local community engagement was good - I saw some sparks flying and was encouraged at their interest in thinking of ideas even if they didn't come up with a lot of unique ones.

I definitely enjoyed the opportunity to break them into groups to work, then present. I wish I had more time, though! Only 42 minutes per period at Wellsboro, and Mrs. Berndtson had to make a couple of announcements - so this was a good test to how I adapt an hour-long LP to a much shorter time period. There may have been some reason to cutting out one of the activities to allow for more group work/brainstorming, but I just liked the iceberg example so much, I had to keep it.

There were like 4 or 5 students who had BOTH classes (one after the other) so I had to come up with something for them to do the second period rather than participating in the same activity again. So, I had them expand upon one of the local community service ideas by making an "advertisement for community service" poster to hang in the school. It turned out to be for Operation Christmas Child, one of the activities that the FFA chapter decided to take on after convention. While the packing date was already over, the students worked together to color a poster for promotion of this opportunity - they can use it next year! I should have had something a bit more engaging for them to do, but the depth of this Life Knowledge lesson wasn't too challenging that there were a lot of extended activities.

Overall, it was a great time to get to know some of my students for the spring and talk to my cooperating teacher some more. I also got to talk to one girl about her mice SAE project and some others about them helping with the rabbits. All in all, this was a great chance to get into our classroom, practice using management techniques there, and begin building rapport. I am super excited for the spring!! I know it is going to fly by!

Mrs. Berndtson, my cooperating teacher. The students say we look like sisters... what do you think? 

**My current list of resources for lessons, powerpoints, info, etc (currently on a sticky note on my computer desktop):

Resources:

1. Glen Rose FFA http://www.glenrosearkansasffa.com/lesson%20plans.htm

2. GA Ag Ed http://www.gaaged.org/Browseable_Folders/Curriculum/Lesson%20Plans/

3. CA Ag Ed http://www.calaged.org/resources/curriculum

4. NAAE CoP

5. CTEonline.org 

6. Craig Kohn , Wisconsin http://wuhsag.weebly.com/

7. Idaho http://www.uidaho.edu/cals/ae4hyd/secondaryagcurriculum

8. FFA Learn https://www.ffa.org/FFAResources/ffalearn/Pages/default.aspx

Entering the real world... Teaching with REAL students! Micro-Unit

Playing with the big boys... means teaching to real, live, breathing high school students. 

It's kind of crazy that we (meaning my entire cohort) were exhausted after 3 days of simply teaching 1 class... I can't wait to see what that first week of teaching in the spring does to us with 5-7 classes a day :) 

Anyways, Central Mountain. I worked with Ms. Hack and taught the Wildlife and Fisheries class (3rd period) with a Habitat mini-unit. This included content about: habitat components, common PA habitats, carrying capacity, and limiting factors (natural and cultural). 

Day 1 was as day 1 as you would have expected. I thought I was pretty prepared and had a good handle on my content. However, we ran out of time and an activity that I had planned did not go as I anticipated (see photo) so I was a bit flustered. I had a few management cues to work on - giving time for students to process, giving clear directions, stamping out chatter from the start, etc. However, I think it went well considering I had a class of 30 students. There were definitely some notes from Mr. Seaman that I took into preparing for day 2. 

Trying to get them to do a circle sit when they didn't want to touch each other...  fail

 Day 2: the testing day. They kind of know who you are and how you work... so they begin to test you a bit. I had a cool activity planned (Project WILD shout out!) to reflect carrying capacity, but later learned it did not seem very "mature" for the students. I also didn't lay out in my mind the concept of the activity that well, and felt like I was not portraying the concept correctly at all when we were participating in it. While Mrs. Rice said I knew the content and seemed to do well, I still felt like I was really messing up - what was going wrong? Why could I not prepare for it well enough? What can I do better to get them all engaged? Well, there aren't really any clear answers to these questions... but I think my hard work and preparation for day 3 really paid off.

Day 3. I was awake until 2:30 AM to prepare for this day... while this doesn't seem that feasible in preparing for classes (x 6) in the spring, I know that the work put into this week will definitely help ease the load in the spring. The students were doing another activity Thursday (Project WILD rocks!) about a turkey population and limiting factors. It was pretty fun, and even included math, but they were more engaged and interested. I also didn't have as many problems with management because they were doing something and I was not trying to lead them in something. 

Overall, it was an excellent (but exhausting) experience. I definitely didn't know as much about TEACHING to real life kids as I thought. There is some credit I can give to State FFA Officer activities in ag classrooms, but looking back, I recall that those were mostly games and fun stuff. We didn't teach too much :) 

SO: concepts to take away for SUCCESS

~be prepared. really. know your stuff.

~set the stage by creating a felt need for the content. I am very bad at this. 

~don't second guess yourself, it will remove credibility and focus from the class session.

~keep directions clear/concise 

~ask high order questions and get them thinking

~teach for many years... then maybe you'll get it down
~remember - no matter how much you plan, it will never go the same as you expect it to in your head! So stay calm, be flexible, and have fun!

Inquiry Based Instruction in ACTION. Time to ruminate!

Get ready to read about the most unique lab preparation experience you will probably ever encounter... at least in AEE 412. 

DISCLAIMER: while this may be my most exciting lab reflection blog post yet, it also does contain some photos of internal animal systems... this blog post is not for the feint of heart (or stomach) but should be JUST FINE for all you AEE majors who will be teaching this stuff! 

While we were told that Inquiry Based Instruction can be the most difficult concept to prepare for, facilitate, and feel successful about of all the methods we have encountered thus far, I felt pretty excited to test the IBI waters with this lab. 

I will be teaching animal digestion in the spring at Wellsboro, and based on a positive personal learning experience from digging into a real digestive system (see the shout-out from my summer EARTH University blog), I figured it would be optimal to provide a digestive system for my "students" (aka college-aged peers) to work with in summarizing my imaginary digestion unit. 

I called the local(ish) butcher shop in Spring Mills, PA on Friday last week to ask about possibly having any digestive systems on hand from an upcoming butchering. I explained that I would use it for an educational lab at Penn State and that I could come pick it up Wednesday. While I would have loved a ruminant system, I didn't really NEED one, so I just told him that anything smaller than a bovine digestive system could work (pig, sheep, goat, etc.). 

He said they were going to be butchering on Tuesday, some beef and some sheep. I asked for them to set aside a digestive system of a sheep (from esophagus to small intestine) so that I could pick it up Wednesday morning. He said no problem. 

I called Tuesday to verify that they would still be able to hold from that day's work, but never received a response, so I drove out to Spring Mills on Wednesday morning hoping for the best. Lab started around 12:20 so I wanted to be back in Ferguson by noon. 

When I and my lovely assistant, Alyssa (sophomore AnSci student), arrived at the butcher shop, they informed us they hadn't kept anything (someone forgot to mention my call) and that it was all outside in the "bins." With this much foreboding statement, one of the guys offered to go out with us and see if anything was salvageable from these bins... Note photo of first glance at the "bins." I didn't think it appropriate to show what was actually in them... 

See the sticker that says "Inedible?" Well, it is accurate.

 Needless to say, we decided not to go digging in aforementioned bins but to brainstorm another option. The guys told us that if we waited around until about lunchtime, some goats were coming in to be butchered and we could take a system from one of them. While this would have pushed back our arrival at Ferguson for lab time, I verified with the lab instructor that I could be a bit late... with digestive system in tow.

While I did not capture photos of the two hours Alyssa and I spent at the butcher shop that morning, let me just say that it was one of the most hands-on educational meat science experiences I have ever had! The guys were so nice at this shop - they asked if we wanted to look around the place, in the coolers, the cutting room, and even be on the kill floor for the goat butchering! While you all may not find this interesting, Alyssa and I took them up on the offer and donned some white lab coats and hair nets to stand in entrance of the kill floor room for the goat arrival...

After getting to know the two main butchers, Bill and "Chicken," and talking with the USDA inspector present, we gathered the ruminant digestive system to come from the first goat and headed back to University Park.

My dear lab group was so very kind to endure the smells that came from the digestive system (not that pleasant) and, for the most part, was involved in the process. The interest approach was giving them these five samples of hay and asking them to gather observations. They were intended to reflect the various steps of forage breakdown in the ruminant system. For the activity itself, the students' only instruction was to "relate these samples of hay to whatever is in the big black bag on the table (aka the ruminant system)."

From top, counterclockwise: dry hay sample, somewhat wet "cud" sample, reticulum partially digested, omasum coarse sample, and finally "puree" abomasum hay. 

While I felt a little strange just sending them to play with the digestive organs without guidance, Emily quickly jumped on the ball (due to extreme personal interest) and kind of led the group in the activity. She, right away, asked for the supplies to get started (butchering knives - something I won't as readily just hand to high school kids) and got started. Some group members were not as keen to dig in, but I gave the option for disinterested students to focus on taking notes/observations for the group. There still was the problem of a disengaged Todd, so I should have pushed him to play a bit of a more active role than just feeding information and watching.

Casi taking notes, Todd giving information, and Annette assisting Emily (ring leader)

It was also difficult, in this "student-centered" situation, to really allow my level of "teacher enthusiasm" to show, as I wasn't really teaching, but rather guiding in learning. The students did an outstanding job of asking questions, answering them, and exploring the system. They cut out some of the actual partially digested food samples and (with some directing questions from me) related them to the original hay samples.

While the time did seem to go fast, I was afraid that, after they related these items to the system, they would think they were done... and they achieved their abstract goal within 10 of the 20 minutes of "dissection" time. However, it was exciting to see that they still kept self-teaching about the connections in the system, linings of the ruminant compartments, and - perhaps the strangest thing that occurred that day - finding tapeworms in the small intestine. It was at first kind of disgusting (well, overall it was) but encouraging that Emily knew a bit about them and shared with the other students that they aren't harmful to the intestines or the meat, but that they just decrease the overall feed efficiency of the animal.

Emily struck the gold mine - and the facial expressions speak for themselves.

Overall, this was an awesome learning experience and unique opportunity to try out IBI. I think I could have allowed the students to make their own conclusions with a little less input, but I was running out of time and wanted to make sure they met the goals of explaining how they went about the process.

I can definitely tell you that I will not forget this week's lab prep and execution anytime soon!