Hay Bales and Teacher Tales

 TLT Symposium This weekend I had the privilege of attending the TLT Symposium at Penn State. This program gave the opportunity to connect teaching with technology. The workshop I attended was fascinating to me. I really enjoyed it as I could view the points and ideas from both a student and future teacher point of view. I attended the "Applying and Workshopping Successful Blended Learning Strategies" workshop. This workshop focused on integrating online modules or portions into a typical lecture class. The ladies running this workshop made a point to say they love this strategy as it connects students to a more “real life“ atmosphere; where not everything will just be on a PowerPoint in front of the room. A major discussion we had during this workshop was how to ensure students are still dedicating time to class and staying engaged during the online portions. The discussions, ideas, and methods brainstormed and experienced from current educators was very beneficial. Ma...

How Does It Affect You? Education and agriculture go hand in hand. The education of agriculture is extremely important and yet many people lack in this area. Sometimes, it blows my mind that people can lack the knowledge of their food, natural resources, land, clothing, and so much more we depend on agriculture for. But, a student in one of my classes opened my eyes and mind more to this topic the other day during lecture. The topic of this days class was “if 5 small farms were about to go under, would it be ethical to take money from the world’s richest man to save them?” The student in my class started his answer with, “well I’m from New York City so the farms don’t really affect me...” Now, this response was jaw dropping too many of us sitting around the room. His response really stuck in my brain though. I and many others in this class were raised on farms or in farming communities. We can look out our front doors and see dairy farms, beef cattle, pigs, and crops. ...

What to Look for in a Student Teaching Placement School     It's the time in college that could be considered one of the toughest choices we have to make as future educators. It is time to pick our student teaching placement locations. To help me in this process of narrowing down potential schools. I chatted with three previous agriculture education students that have went through this process already. The first I talked with is Heather, a current student teacher. A quote from Heather that really stuck out to me was "I wanted a program that wasn’t focused just on awards and degrees (they are important tho). I see much more to agriculture education than keeping records or winning an awards. My focus is on the students. As agriculture majors and students we often get caught up in the awards game, and lose focus on the individuals that are not involved. So, I looked for a school that  had a balance." She also stated that she was glad she found a school that was opposi...