Mid-week update: Dios es bueno

Dios = God
Bueno = good
I'm sure you can put them together :)

I know this is a semi-professional blog, but I don't think there should be a problem giving credit where credit is due for an improved professional experience. After all, my life is centered around my faith, and the Lord has provided some great things, through faith and prayer, that have been beneficial to this experience thus far. Friendships, opportunities, beautiful weather, joy and peace are among a few of the blessings that have been poured out over the past few days.

So what is going on? Well, since my last post, where I shared that things were still very much up in the air, I have been able to pin down some more concrete areas to focus on. But first let me reflect on what this experience is meant to be about - my major is agricultural and extension education (why yes, that is a 10 year old picture of me on the web page... #awkward).

While student teaching for this experience usually focuses on school-based formal agricultural education (see previous blog posts about my teaching experience in Wellsboro), we knew that my time in Costa Rica would be unique, as this internship has never been done before outside of the U.S. Again, as I reflected last week, the placements here in Costa Rica are normally a formal classroom setting, but because I am in agriculture, I was placed with a University, which happens to specialize in ag. However, I have accepted the fact that teaching students at this university in a manner comparable to the first portion of my student teaching experience would be almost impossible. They only have 5 weeks left in the semester, meet only once a week per class, and already have professors with concrete curriculum. So I have basically given up on attempting to truly "teach" the students here at UTN - after all, they're my age and probably know more than me in their focus areas.

Like I said, my major is agricultural and extension education, and if you are unfamiliar with the concept of extension - it is a more informal manner of educating people about agriculture (or other areas). This is more "field work" where the educator usually travels to the pupil (farmer) and works with them to improve their existing systems and farming activities. My father works with extension programming at Penn State, and extension is an area of interest for me on a global level. While formal education (schools) are important in the developing world, public and informal education is a more common means of working in community development, especially in agriculture.

So, with that said, I am attempting to develop experiences more focused in extension work, here at UTN. They have a similar 3-pillar structure to Land-Grant Universities in the U.S. - teaching, extension, research. My original "mentor" here at UTN is actually the director of university extension, so it seems to fit that I can now focus more on the development of public, non-formal educational programs.

Okay, so what does that mean? Well, other than working with a university employee to plan an "Animal veterinary fair" for the public (more on that to come) and offering assistance with other scheduled events, I am helping with some "tours" of the University... TODAY I GOT TO TEACH HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS!

Whoa, say what? A university, high schoolers? Well, haven't you ever had a field trip or school visit to a university in high school? Exactly. UTN opens its doors to groups of secondary students (and even primary students) for tours of the campus and animal facilities (stay tuned for a photo blog "campus tour") and additionally offers its expertise (via professors or employees) to give "talks" about a requested area by the visiting school.

Today, a group of students from a CTP (Colegio Tecnico Profesional) traveled over 2 hours to visit the university. CTPs are "technical" high schools in Costa Rica that offer students a general diploma PLUS a technical diploma in a specific "major" or technical area. I worked with another CTP during my time in Turrialba (2012) to collect data for my thesis so I know a bit about them... but let me not digress too much. These 20 students are in 12th grade (final year) of a "major" known as agroindustry. Basically, they are studying food processing and technology. They came to see the facilities at UTN that encompass the Food Technology major and programs - a dairy processing plant, meat processing plant, and general food laboratory. They also requested a general "talk" about food safety, microbiology, and flow diagrams of food processing. Since I was previously a food science major at Penn State, I knew exactly what they were looking for. So I worked with my new friend, Carolina, to develop a 1-hour LESSON PLAN yesterday afternoon (yes, to my AEE cohort members, I made a complete lesson plan for this :) ).

She had already begun working on a PowerPoint, and gave me an overview of what they wanted and what she was preparing to talk about... then I got all "teacher" on her and threw out some more "student centered" instructional ideas. After all, a group of 12th grade students doesn't want to sit and listen to someone talk for an hour! For the portion of the "talk" that was to discuss 7 major career areas that follow the "food technology" program/degree, I gave the idea of making small groups of students study the career then present to the whole group while I "interviewed" them about what they learned.

It went super well!! They seemed to have fun... and they learned about careers! Then we "quizzed" them about microbiological agents in food technology (both harmful and helpful), followed by a short time where Carolina discussed dairy processing and machinery. Finally, instead of just talking about flow charts (diagrams) of food processing steps, we made the students figure out the 13-step (simplified) process of making yogurt. Considering they have already made yogurt in their practical experiences, they did a pretty good job at working as a group to complete the activity. Here is a video of them "discussing" which goes where :)

Overall, the experience was awesome! Although we had planned for an hour, we got cut to 30 minutes due to scheduling changes (something not all that uncommon in Costa Rica) - but with a bit less time on some other activities and adaptations for the group activity, we made it work in about 35 minutes! Plus, I think the kids loved it. It was also very rewarding because I was able to collaborate, facilitate, and teach in Spanish - for the first time ever :) Mind you, this was something I feared, but the only problem I think I had in "facilitating" them was getting them split into groups (a typical high school student problem).

Okay, so now that I shared a lot for just having given one lesson (whereas I gave hundreds at Wellsboro), I will close with some fun (phone) photos. Don't worry, real pictures (with my dear camera, Boaz) are coming soon.

That's right. A lesson plan. Oh yes. 

Learning objectives! In Spanish!

Explaining the activity 

Organizing them into groups... more difficult than you think with highschoolers 

Group work!

Just because... campus decor.