Seeking: Student Teaching Placement

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 opposite from the high school she grew up in. The second former ag ed student teacher I talked to is currently in her second year of teaching. Hannah said she knew what she was looking for in a program because she wanted to student teach somewhere that she could see herself actually teaching at in the future. She wanted a single teacher program, in a rural community, that was local to her current responsibilities. She also stated that "I like having a single teacher program because I enjoy the challenge and decision making that goes along with it." The last Penn State graduate I seeked wisdom from was Mason who has also been teaching for a few years now. Mason stated that he had some specific requirements he wanted in his school. He wanted a multi teacher program that was far away from his hometown, that had some aspects of what he knew but also classes that he was not as comfortable with. He also said he did not want to stress about finding housing. After visiting his potential placement, he said many things fell right into place and a major factor was feeling comfortable with the teacher. All three of these individuals gave me many good tips when picking where I may want my placement to be.

For my student teaching placement, I have multiple situations that I think would truly benefit me in my future as an educator. First, I think seeing a multi teacher ag program would be great. It would give me the opportunity to see how they work together for the FFA and how the share their schedules and split classes. I also think it would be a good opportunity to see a female agriculture teacher in the classroom. I think it would be interesting to see how she runs and manages her classroom. A program that is largely involved or focuses on the topics of mechanics, shop, horticulture or plant science would also be beneficial. I do not have a large experience in these topics and a student teaching placement with these would help me to develop the skills and knowledge to teach them in my own classroom in the future.