Week 15: The Final Edition of the Tri-Valley Times

It's really here..the last day.

I can't believe how quickly 15 weeks has flown by. Looking back on the beginning of my student teaching internship I never believed that so much could happen in so little time. When I first came to Tri-Valley I hoped that I would walk away at the end of 15 weeks with my students having learned at least one thing from me; however, I never imagined just how much they would have taught me.

Over the course of this year I have taught 8 different classes, over 80 different students and spent countless hours and miles with my students, and it has been a roller-coaster of a time. There were ups and downs, yelling, crying, and laughing. There have been funny notes left on my desk, texts and tweets to ask about assignments or sometimes just to say hi. There have been group pictures and not-so-secret secret selfies, when I pass my phone out to take pictures of class. 

My students, and yes I will still claim all of them, taught me a lot about the kind of program I am looking for, the kind of ag. teacher I want to be, and also a lot about me as a person. They taught me how to stay patient, they taught me how to manage a shop, they taught me how to relax, and most of all they taught me how no matter where we live or where we come from, we're really not that different. 

I am really going to miss all of my students and all the great memories I made while at Tri-Valley and though I may have made it through the whole last school day without crying, as soon as that last bell rang and the classroom was officially empty save me, I sat at my desk and just let the waterfall pour. I'm sad knowing I had to leave and though I know I'll quite a few of them in just a few days at Eastern Region CDE's and then the majority of them when I return for FFA Banquet in a few weeks, I already miss them so much. I got used to their silly comments and jokes, and even their versions of what my personal life must have been growing up in Philly.

So it might be goodbye for now but I know I will see them again soon and I look forward to hearing about what they do in the future.

Oh, and yes if I start teaching somewhere where it's nice and warm, I'll let Mrs. D know..... ;)

Helping the Community: Teaching About Bats, Our Helpful Nocturnal Neighbors

Surrounding the Tri-Valley Jr./Sr. High School is over 100 acres of beautiful forestland. Almost half of this forest, approximately 48 acres, is preserved as the Tri-Valley Environmental Education Center, as part of the Tri-Valley School District. This property serves as a valuable resource for the students of Tri-Valley and the greater community, both human and animal alike. The Environmental Education Center is home to a diverse range of animal and plant species, including several species of bats. Bats can sometimes receive a negative reputation as a scary animal; however, bats are some of the most beneficial animals to have around – especially for agriculture! 

Bats serve a very important role as pollinators of agricultural crops and also assist in pest control as bats eat many of the insects that can harm agricultural crops and livestock. However, while bats are very helpful to us they are currently facing a huge problem. Almost 40% of all American bat species are in severe decline or already listed as endangered or threatened. This decline in the numbers of bats is due to many factors, but two of those are habitat loss and White Nose Syndrome.

This is where some of the students of the Tri-Valley Agricultural Education department have decided to step in to help, and you can too! Working with the local forester, the environmental science teacher, the agriculture teachers, and elementary teachers, the students created an informational bat display along with several bat boxes. The display includes educational information about bats, including power-points and resources on the habitat of bats and the their life spans. The students also found and/or created several activities and lessons to teach younger students about bats, along with some activities to teach about other nocturnal animals as well. In addition to creating these resources, the students used the stewardship plan for the Environmental Education Center to determine the best areas to create habitat for bats. After determining three specific areas in the plan that were suitable for bat habitat, several students created plans to build bat boxes, which can serve as man-made habitats for bats and encourage bats to live in areas suited for them, instead of in old barns. In addition to the bat boxes, the students also learned that dead standing trees, known as snags, could also serve as bat habitat.

The students will be displaying the information and some of the bat boxes at the Schuylkill County Fair. As an FFA activity, the students create a “Farming for a Day” tent display at the fair each year, focused on teaching the younger generations about agriculture and the impact it has on all our lives each day. This upcoming summer, one of the displays in the tent will be the Bat Display the students created this spring. The students are excited to teach their community about the great resource right in their backyards in the Environmental Education Center, and about the many amazing species that call it home, including our helpful nocturnal neighbors – the bats.

Does Instructional Time Length Impact Student Achievement?: Action Research Study

Students’ academic success is affected by many resource factors, not least of which is time. Time plays a major role in how students succeed, whether it’s time spent on instructional activities, time spent on test preparation, or time spent interacting face-to-face with classmates and teachers. Every year you can find headlines in the news and research articles showing how the U.S. is behind in academic achievement compared to other nations, with much of the focus on the length of the school year, week, or day. And while there are many different scheduling structures, with advantages and disadvantages to both, does instructional time really impact student-learning achievements in small time increments.

At my cooperating center I taught two sections of my Ag Sciences II-IV classes. This class was taught with the same course material in two different sections, the first being taught during 3^rd period, the standard 45-minute length, while the other is during 5^th period, a 60-minute length period to accommodate the two 30-minute lunch periods that overlap with it. There was no difference between which students were placed into which section other than whichever fit better into their overall class schedule.

To determine if time really does matter, I conducted my action research study by comparing the grades of the students in both sections against each other, using their second term grade as their starting point and their third term grade as their end point. I compared the overall change in grade, whether it was positive or negative, of each individual student and the average for the class. Each student also took a cumulative unit exam and the individual scores and class averages were also calculated and compared between the two sections. The only differences in class instruction for the two sections were that 5^th period, the second, longer section, received more in-class time to complete assignments, more opportunities to ask clarifying questions, and during certain lessons received additional examples to explain lesson objectives and content.

After collecting and analyzing my data the results I found showed that yes the students in the 5^th period section of the class did receive higher grades on the cumulative exam than the 3^rd period section, with an average grade of 84.79 in 3^rd period and 96.18 in 5^th period. The 5^th period students also had higher class grades than their peers with the average second term grade being 89.79 and average third term grade being 90.71, as compared to the 3^rd period students with an average second term grade of 80.13 and average third term grade of 84.6.  However, upon looking at the data further I find that while the 5^th period students did have the higher grades overall, it was the 3^rd period students who appeared the have the greatest change in grade from the second term to third term. The average change in grade for the 3^rd period class was an increase of 4.47 grade points, while the average change in grade for the 5^th period class only had an increase of 0.93 grade points.

Based on these results, I do not think that this study was able to show a correlation between longer class time and academic improvement, though I do believe that there were several other factors that impacted the study. The first is that in both 3^rd and 5^th period I have several students who, due to their personal class schedule constraints, are only able to attend class on either an A-day or a B-day, even though the class occurs on both schedule days. The second factor that I believe greatly impacted the study was the amount of instructional time lost due to weather. Over the course of my student teaching internship approximately 15 school days were impacted by winter weather conditions, either through early dismissals, late arrivals, or cancellations – which took away the majority of the instructional time.

Due to these factors my study wasn’t able to show if a difference in instructional time length impacted student achievement but it did make me more aware of the variety of factors that can impact instructional time, including seasonal weather.

Got Milk?!: On-Farm Employment SAE Visit

For me there was no better way to finish up student teaching than to go on one more SAE visit. This time I was heading over to the family farm of Ms. Emily Kahler. Emily is absolutely one of my favorite students and one I can't wait to see what she accomplishes once she leaves Tri-Valley in just a few months. Emily is a senior in my Ag Science class and is finishing up her term as the Chapter President. She was one of the first students I met when I began my journey with Tri-Valley last spring so I think it’s fitting that she gets to be one of the ones I finish it with.

Emily, along with her older brother, is the third generation on their family’s dairy farm. Currently milking approximately 90 Holstein dairy cows, the farm is solely operated by her parents and older brother, with Emily helping when she’s not in school and every now and then Granma comes down to help out.

Emily’s main job on the farm is caring for the calves and young heifers, responsible for the afternoon shift of watering and feeding all the calves in hutches and the younger heifers that have been moved into the end of the free-stall barn. It’s clear that Emily enjoys working with the young calves, and it’s easy to see why looking at the row of cute black and white calves lining the entrance to the farm.

Emily’s true passion is in graphic design, but while we worked alongside her taking care of the calves and touring the farm, we talk about the possibilities of using her graphic design experience in the agriculture field after she graduates from college.

Once the calves were fed and we met up with her brother to learn about the nutritional aspect of the farm, we headed down to the parlor led by our unofficial tour guide, King the family dog. Normally her parents handle all the milking by themselves, taking about three hours twice a day, but when Emily’s there she jumps right in, so we got to see Emily working along side her parents while her mom caught Mrs. D and I up on the town gossip.

It was a great, relaxing way to finish out student teaching and it was nice to spend a beautiful (but slightly chilly) day outside, enjoying the smell of cows and hay. I’ve really enjoyed getting to work with Emily all semester long, watching her receive her Keystone Degree in January and then working with her on her record-books, Proficiency and Scholarship Applications. I cant wait to see what great things she does next.

DIY - CDE Resources

One of the assignments during student teaching was to develop a DIY project (Do It Yourself) that would aid to our development as teachers but also benefit our cooperating centers. To figure out what I should do for this project I decided to go back to the three-circle model. I believe that student teaching in general will help me improve upon the circle of classroom & laboratory instruction, and that my experiences working with students throughout the semester would help with SAE, so now that leaves the circle of FFA.

As a student I was very involved in FFA in my local chapter and took part in several state and national activities, but my time in FFA was very focused – I picked one or two things and I worked on them again and again each year to improve. One such example is in the Career Development Events and that is where I got my idea for my DIY. I decided to develop “CDE’s-In-A-Box,” resource kits to help train and prepare students to compete in several different Career Development Events.

When I was a student I only competed in the Livestock Evaluation CDE, and while I have helped judge and facilitate a few different CDE’s during my college career, they have mostly been the public speaking contests and not technical skills, so that is where I decided to focus. I planned to compile resources for at least three different CDE’s to help serve as a starting point for ag. teachers when beginning to train a team.

Based on the preferences of the students at Tri-Valley the CDE’s I compiled resources for were: Livestock Evaluation, Poultry Evaluation, Veterinary Skills, and Wildlife. These resources were compiled from a variety of different sources including Communities of Practice, various State FFA Associations, the National FFA Association, and several state universities and extension services. My students were also involved in the process, as they complied resources for the Poultry Evaluation CDE through a group project.

The original idea for the project was to create boxes and/or binders of the various resources; however, after discussing it with my cooperating teacher we decided that digital versions would be much more helpful and easier to distribute amongst students. So before I left to head back to campus I left her a binder full of the physical hard copies of the resources the students had found for Poultry Evaluation, in addition to a USB drive full of digital versions of all of the resources found for the various CDE’s, among other helpful documents. 

Hopefully, the resources are helpful for the students and Mrs. D and they will be used quickly as some of the students will be competing in several of those CDE’s at the regional contests at the end of the month with state convention in less than two months. At the end of each school year the FFA members also host and participate in an Ag Field Day, a daylong Ag Olympics event and sometimes one of the events is a portion of a mock CDE, possibly one of the ones they now have training resources on.

Getting the 'Big Desk": Administrator Interview

One of the most nerve-wracking parts of the job search for me is the interview. I have a pretty good idea of what kind of program I am looking forward but I still really nervous every time I have to prove to someone that I am the kind of ag. teacher they are looking for. To try and help with this fear, one of our assignments was to have a mock interview with one of our administrators.

For my interview I met with Mr. Hall, the principal at Tri-Valley Jr./Sr. High School and we had a mock interview mixed with a discussion about interviews and hiring in general. Using some of the standard interview questions for hiring at Tri-Valley along with interview questions I had brought along to prepare for an upcoming interview I had, Mr. Hall and I went back and forth with the questions. First, he would ask me a question and I’d answer it as if it was a real interview, but then we’d talk through my responses and what he thought was good and what could be reworded or elaborated on.

When we would talk about a question involving “how would you react to the situation of…” whether it was about parent interaction or classroom management Mr. Hall said that you always have to remember one thing – you have the Big Desk. He said that when answering questions related to those scenarios and or responding to those scenarios in reality, he said always remember that you as the teacher have the Big Desk and you know what you are doing. He said part of having the Big Desk is having the confidence in what you are doing, relating back to having confidence when interviewing.

Mr. Hall also took the time to share with me stories of his own interview experiences, both as the interviewer but also the interviewee. Based on his experiences he said the major thing to remember about interviews is that they should always be a two-way street. The interviewer should be determining if the interviewee is the best candidate for the position while the interviewee should be determining if the placement is the best position for themselves. He said this is where the importance of good questions lies as the right question can sometimes tell the interviewee a lot about what the interviewer is not telling you about the position/placement.

Overall, I had a great time talking with Mr. Hall. We discussed how I was enjoying my time at Tri-Valley and how much he has learned and is still learning about agricultural education. Working in his school has been a joy this semester and I only hope that wherever I decide to teach that I am lucky enough to have administrators who are at least half as supportive of their ag. programs as he is of Tri-Valley’s.

Week 14: Testing, Testing, & More Testing

I've felt like this next to last week has brought a subtle but anxious feeling, almost like the calm before a storm. This is not meant in a negative way, but I think that's how some of my students and I felt knowing that soon the classroom would be one person less.

This week was the beginning of every student's and teacher's least favorite season of the year - standardized test season. With the 8th graders taking their PSSA tests and the preparation for the upcoming Keystones going into hyperdrive, many of the teachers, including Mrs. D, were proctoring exams so I got the chance to take over the Ag. Sciences II-IV classes a few times, of course just confusing the students again about when I was actually leaving.

By this point my Vet Science students were quickly finishing up the Anatomy & Physiology unit, giving us just enough time to complete the whole unit before I leave next week. This week we learned about the muscular system and I was excited to hear that for some of my older students in the class our class was lining up nicely with their Anatomy class, reinforcing some of the material. To learn and review some of the muscles of the dog my class played "Pin the Muscle on the Doggy," which I think my students really enjoyed.

In my Ag. Science I class my students are wrapping up their tool-box constructions and they are all looking great, with some a little more unique looking than others. A few hiccups the past few weeks with equipment not functioning properly, including the jigsaw and planer, delayed some of the students' progress but they all pushed through it, finding new ways to (safely!) complete tasks without (much) complaining.

I can't believe I only have one more week here...

Week 13: Back from Easter - Now Only 3... & PAAE Time

Having arrived back refreshed from a great four-day weekend at home for the holiday, it felt strange to come back and only be teaching three classes and I wasn't the only one who thought so. Now that student teaching was quickly coming to a close I had handed back the reins on most of the classes to Mrs. D but I was keeping the Ag Science I class, the Vet Science class, and our 8th graders up until the end. It felt strange but nice to be able to sit back and observe how Mrs. D taught again and see how she has adapted since some of the changes I enacted in the classroom. It also gave me the chance to talk more with other teachers in the building and learn from their experiences in education, regardless of the subject they taught.

This week was also the Eastern Region's PAAE spring meeting, so Wednesday night Mrs. D and I headed off to Lancaster to meet up with the other teachers in the region and talk about how we could continue to improve our profession. That night was spent focusing on topics such as the new NOCTI standards that are in progress to (hopefully) better align the NOCTI exams with the standard content taught with PA ag. education. We also discussed several upcoming or in the works ideas for professional development, including the XLR8 programs for experienced teachers, continuing efforts to strengthen advocacy for agricultural education, and professional development focused on technology use in the classroom and the importance of having an "AET Guru" to improve our state and local chapters' system of SAE's. While student members don't have the power to vote on any issues, it was still great to get to experience teachers taking control of their own professional development and working towards improving ag. education across that state as a whole.

Now to wrap up the week I am heading to Round #2 of Banquet Season - heading north to join Mrs. D for the Line Mountain FFA Banquet and I'm excited for another chance to pick up some new things about banquet planning and checking out another ag. program.

Week 12: Spring Break Arrives & Dr. Foster Visits

This week both flew by and dragged on at the same time...

This was the week right before spring break. Every day both the students and teachers could feel the spring fever sinking in as the weather finally became warmer and winter finally left us (fingers crossed). In Vet Science class we had finally moved onto my last unit, Anatomy & Physiology, and so this week we were finishing up learning about directional terminology with marshmallow bunny dissections (no gummi bears) and learning about skeletal anatomy and bone composition using edible bone models.

In my Ag. Sciences II-IV classes the students conducted debate presentations on issues within the poultry industry including housing structures and its impact on welfare, and urban backyard chickens. After our debate presentations, the students worked in groups to complete a Poultry Evaluation CDE Training Kit project, where the CDE was divided into five major components with each group of students in charge of a different component. The students were to find training resources for that section of the CDE as if they were practicing for it, but they also had to identify what skills were tested/utilized in that part of the contest and how that portion of the contest connected to the poultry industry. There were some difficulties with technology throughout the project and I wish that based on the schedule I could have given the students more time to complete the project, however based on the situations we had, some of the students did a really nice job on it and hopefully their resources can help the next time a team wants to compete in that CDE.

This week was also my second observational visit from Dr. Foster and his insight into my classroom and teaching ability was greatly needed. After a day full of encouraging "life-talks," discussions about employment prospects, and helpful tips to thrive during the last few weeks of student teaching, it was time to enjoy a much needed spring break.