Brubaker's Big Picture Review - Annville-Cleona Awesomeness

When beginning my first week of student teaching, I was expecting to ease into all of my classes having a feeling for each of the students after a week of observation. To my surprise, I was extremely wrong! My cooperating teacher told me “you’ll only understand the life of an Ag. Teacher if you experience it the real way.” The first day of the marking period, a week after my arrival, I began teaching all of my classes. At first I was confused as to why I would be given such a work load,
but I would not change it for the world!

The best memory from my student teaching experience was dissecting the stomach of a cow during my Introduction to Agriculture class. To engage my students from the beginning of the experience, I explained the idea of using a real cow stomach for the dissection  to observe the different components. The responses I got from there students were unreal. “Why would we want to know the parts of a stomach?” or “That sounds disgusting, count me out”. As the days got closer to the dissection, students in other classes were asking if they could come to our dissection day because they were hearing it could be pretty awesome! It was amazing to see how the impact of a few students who were extremely interested could change the minds of the rest of the students in the classes, as well as those not enrolled in agriculture courses. The best part of the dissection was knowing that my students had such an interest in the lab, they all diligently worked on their lab packets and could identify the parts and explain their functions. This moment allowed me to know; the students learned something new and were excited and interested in the content!

Another great memory with my students was participating in their FFA events and providing them support every step of the way. Two events the students at Annville-Cleona High School participated in were Public Speaking and ACES conference. The students who were involved in the Public Speaking contest made me believe it is 100% possible to train a group of dedicated students to succeed and accomplish their goals. It was the best opportunity to watch my students develop into great public speakers starting from a stuttering, eye clutched to the paper, nervous individual. The students were dedicated and spent multiple hours reciting and practicing their speeches. ACES was also a memorable moment because the students were capable of representing their school while including me in their learning experience. It was awesome watching the students network with other chapters and include me in their experience!

My experience has been more than I had ever imagined and flew by! It is awesome to see how the components of Agriculture Education can merge together and change the lives of students. I believe that Agriculture Education has the ability to change a student’s life and mold them into a confident, goal setting and accomplishing individual.

To learn more about starting on the path to having a career that makes a positive impact on the lives of student across the glob by becoming an agricultural educator, please contact the agricultural teacher education program at teachag@psu.edu. Follow us on Twitter @TeachAgPSU, or on Facebook at www.facebook.com/PSUTeachAg.

Submitted by:

Kristy Brubaker

@kristylane

2013 Student Teacher

Annville-Cleona High School