As I traveled with my chapter to Harrisburg for the conferences, ACES and SLLC, I got to see the "teacher" side of things. Instead of attending workshops and meeting people in blue jackets, I sat in a conference room, meeting other teachers and learning about various things that could help me out in my teaching career.
At ACES conference we learned more about AET, a new record keeping process, that will not go away and will start to faze out the Pennsylvania Record book. This was very beneficial since I am teaching my leadership class how to use it as we start to plan our SAEs. I also plan to use it eventually when I have my own chapter and will have all of my students on it rather than using two different record books. Mike Woods also gave a presentation on National Chapter awards and how to be successful with them. This helps to advertise your program and get recognition for all the AWESOME THINGS YOUR CHAPTER DOES! It was also just a great professional experience to talk to the different teachers from across the state and figure out what they do with their chapters and AET. There is always something to learn from someone.
At SLLC I helped with grading the proficiency awards. I helped Mrs. B and one of our students fill out his in specialty crop production, but it was really beneficial to see other applications. In Pennsylvania there are a lot of opportunities that are not taken advantage of with proficiency areas that do not have any applicants in. Now, I can take this knowledge that I have learned and help my future students gear their SAEs to different proficiency awards, for them to get recognized and awarded for their hard efforts.
Another professional activity was a discussion with the teachers about where we want Pennsylvania Agricultural Education to be in the next five years. It was really interesting to listen to the different opinions of the new teachers and the ones that have been teachers for more than fifteen years. I also got resources for soils from a teacher that was grading and had extra packets with her.
Later, the Pennsylvania Department of Education sent a representative in to inform the teachers about Student Learning Objectives (SLO). These are becoming a requirement that school districts are starting to have their teachers do. She gave us resources that we can access on-line to help us out with forming them for our classes. She talked about having students complete a mock customer interaction and sales presentation where they earn at least a 75%. This aids with the students professional growth especially if they are staying on the farm. I frequently remind my freshman that are in my leadership class that they need to know how to talk to their customers on the farm if they are going to take it over. It is important to be able to show what we are teaching in our classes and how we are evaluating our students.
Through the professional development experiences I have learned a lot more about Pennsylvania Agriculture Education. It was also interesting to talk to Mr. Stollar about what we learned at SLLC because even he, who was at the old guys table, still learned more from just talking with other agricultural teachers. I think that just really goes to prove that there is always something to learn no matter what.
Interesting reading.
ReplyDeleteAET or similar is certainly the wave of the present for record books. I tried to do the on-line records in PA 12 years ago, but there was no $ to do so and PSU insisted we change from excel to power-pro. Needless to say, it did not happen.
I would have liked to have heard what teachers had to say about Ag Ed in PA in 5 years. I truly believe we have some tremendous opportunities, but also some tremendous challenges. It will be interesting to see what your generation of teachers achieves.
I am glad that a teacher shared with you - one of my goals from decades ago was to encourage sharing. it did not happen often but we have surely encouraged it. I hope you see more of that in the future and especially at the dinner meeting.
I called you an over achiever because no one else has given me three blogs in one week. personally I like reading these aspects of your student teaching, so keep up the great work!