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!