NAAE Reflection

What a week of professional development it was! But don't worry, there was some fun things involved! The National Association of Agricultural Educators conference was in San Antonio, Texas. Such a change in weather and the environment in general! It was great!

Left: Random picture taken between a luncheon and a workshop.

Right: Jenna Bush-Hager speaking to us at the ACTE conference that was held at the same time as NAAE. She was really emotional and supportive towards teaching and all that we do!

Anyway, I made a ton of connections to ag teachers from across the nation and went to a bunch of great workshops. 

The workshops that stuck out to me were....

• empathy
• effective directions
• special education
• ethanol

All of those workshops were conducted by different people (one being Dr. Foster). They were all really informative.

These are the results of the activities we completed in the empathy workshop.

As I have been working on lesson plans and making directions, I have found myself thinking about what I learned in the effective directions workshop. I keep running through my head the outline of what directions should look like.

I also really enjoyed the teacher panels we had for discussions. Dr. Jessica Jones from Virginia was super impactful to the entire audience. She cares about her students a lot but still knows how to have fun while teaching her students.

Lots of Fun Times!!

Two of my favorite things to do was to hang out with Pennsylvania ag teachers for a boat ride and for dinner one night. It was great getting to know some teachers that I will hopefully be working with in the future (and ones that I look up to)!

Left: sights during the boat ride

Right: a light show on a cathedral (we went to this right after our PA teacher dinner)

Overall, I cannot wait until I get to go to NAAE as a non-student teacher! It was really exciting to experience a new culture and get to meet other professionals at the same time!

Life Knowledge Lesson Reflection

I completed my Life Knowledge lesson during my Thanksgiving break. My lesson was a combination of 2 FFA Life Knowledge communication lessons. I taught the Ag 2 class which is 2 periods during the day. I'm going to start with the negatives of my lesson then end on a happy note.

Things to change

• A common theme, my lack of confidence in front of real students was an issue again
• The first period that I taught, I didn't really give a "why they needed to learn communication skills."
• There were small classroom management issues in the first period. They were still doing what they needed to do so I let their misbehavior go when I should not have.
• I need to start recognizing things that need change and then change them on my own
• Have a clicker or something to carry around to change slides while I am walking around the room

Things to keep the same

• Generally, my pace was good and the students kept up with what I was saying.
• The students were highly involved in the lesson. They answered all of my questions when I asked them. I did this for every slide I made.
• I had good content that the students truly enjoyed talking about.
• I took a few negatives and changed them for the 2nd time I taught the lesson that day.

Overall, I enjoyed teaching this lesson. The students seemed really into it for the most part. I saw an improvement in the way some of them spoke (I had a small speaking activity at the end of the lesson).

Ag Mechanics Demonstration

My demo was on sweating a joint/sautering a copper pipe. This was only taught to our cohort. This time, I had a hard time finding good things about this lesson but here they are. I had a sheet clearly outlining all of the steps that were to be done. I had decent student interaction throughout my mini lesson. All of the materials I needed were right on hand during the demonstration except I had a student go and get a wet cloth for the end of the demo. 

I was not confident at all. If I were to do this again, I would definitely actually practice the steps. I practiced before I recorded my demo but I would practice multiple times before I actually taught this to students. Along with practicing, I would make sure the torch works and I know what "setting" to have it on to maximize the time being used.

Micro-Teaching Lab Reflection

A cohort member of mine, Kayla, and I went to Juniata High School with Mrs. Morgan. Our micro-teaching experience was supposed to be 3 days in a row with the same group of students. Everything was perfectly fine until about the week before we had to complete this experience. The weather was going to be cold and snowy. Well, what do you know? The snow not only cancelled Juniata's school days but cancelled PSU's school days as well! While my hometown only got 4 inches of snow, State College reportedly got 11.5 inches!!!!!

Kayla and I only got one day of teaching in. It was a relief to finally be in the classroom teaching students and not teaching our peers who were trying to portray high school students. My class was a plant/soil science class that is currently on plant science. I decided to switch gears and teach about soils. My three lessons were "What is soil," "Edible Soil Horizons," and "What is soil pH?"

Logically, I taught the "What is soil" lesson first to get the basics out of the way. Overall, it went really well. I walked around the room just enough and asked just enough questions. I really wanted to have the students interacting more during the lesson and I definitely did that with asking so many questions.

On the other hand, I was wavering in my speech. Mrs. Morgan and Kayla both said what I already knew; I need to be more confident. I know the material and what I want to do so I just need to be more confident when I am actually in front of the students.

When we were at the school, we talked about missing days due to snow. Well, what do you do in that case? There are many options. You can just forget that lesson (NOT a good idea), wait until the next day to complete that lesson (a better idea), or you can put the lesson online if possible (a really good option if you do it right). I couldn't say what I would do in those situations. I think it would depend on what class(es) I am teaching at that time. Hands-on classes would be very hard to conduct online so that is not really an option.

Virtual Mentor Exploration....part 3!!

Key Question: What are the best tips/resources you would provide to new teachers regarding special needs accommodations? 

As a follow-up to the last virtual mentor exploration, we were asked to do another (what I would consider) diversity blog post! For as many special needs accommodations that there are, there are a ton more ways to help these learners!

A big point that my mentors came up with was use your special education teachers. They may have worked with your particular students before which would help you to know what accommodations are needed. The special education teachers also know the school district. They can point you in the right direction towards other resources within or outside of your school district.

Even though this isn't from a virtual mentor of mine, I attended a workshop on special education at the National Association for Agricultural Educators conference last week in San Antonio. Ms. Becky Haddad was the workshop facilitator. Thank you!

*side note: the 80 degree weather was super awesome compared to the 11 degree windchill I heard there was at home!*

An accommodation is a change in how a student learns. Some very common accommodations are guided notes, provide formulas/steps, word banks, etc. As I think back to some of the lesson plans that I have already completed, I know I use vocabulary handouts and guided notes a lot. While that is good, I need to remember that that won't work for everybody and that I shouldn't do that all the time if I can help it.


As a teacher, a really cool resource to have was a sheet that keeps track of your students with needs and what accommodations they need. It keeps all of this information organized, especially if you have a class with a large number of students with special needs. Below is a picture of this pretty cool sheet!