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| In front of the White House in DC |
Hello everyone, I am Jeanne Case, 2014 student teacher and
the 2013 Student Teach Ag! Blogger. This summer in addition to blogging and taking a
summer English class, I was an intern at the
Pennsylvania Farm Bureau for the
Friends of Agriculture Foundation. I worked with the non-profit educational part
of the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau and had lots of projects such as developing
the take home activity for Ag Progress Days and the game that the kids played on-site. I also helped out with the FACE youth conference which I posted a
blog
about earlier in the summer; Greg Peterson was the keynote speaker and
talked about advocating for agriculture.
Agriculture in the Classroom was the other major conference that I helped run this summer at Penn State. In addition to the projects with the Foundation
I also got experience in the Member Relations Division. Attending the membership
kick-off conference, working membership in my County and traveling around
Adams County with a Regional Organization Director (ROD), kept me busy. I was able to travel to
Washington, D.C. and Harrisburg to see what our lobbyists do, as well as attend
the Policy Development Kickoff meeting and the Commodity meetings with the
third division, Government Relations.
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A student at FACE conference
giving a thumbs up |
The FACE (Fueling Agriculture and Cultivating Excellence) conference was easily my favorite week at Pennsylvania Farm Bureau, even while working 27 hours of over-time! It was great to watch the students come in shy
on Monday, then not want to leave all the friends they had made when it was time for them to depart on Friday. I was in charge of the Swine Commodity group
with Brittany Courson, the Regional Organization Director. Our group was responsible for making a video and Facebook page to advocate for the swine industry. The students gained a new perspective; they do not typically need to explain the importance
of their industry. The students also had to write bills to send in to the FACE version of the House
of Representatives where they were discussed.
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| Some of the female employees at the FACE conference |
The
students in my group kept asking me where I was going to be student teaching
and looked sad when I said Dover High School; none of them go there. I asked
them for
tips on how to be a good student teacher and they said to not make my students feel dumb. The students said it’s not good for the student teacher to talk
over their heads and then get frustrated when the students don’t understand the lesson because the student teacher isn't explaining it well. I am also supposed to be strict…but not
too strict, and BE EXCITING! If I don’t move around the classroom and instead just stay
in one spot and am really boring the students won’t pay attention and will fall
asleep. It was really great to hear that from a student’s perspective as I will
try my best to not be boring in the classroom!
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| Attendees and volunteers at AITC |
AITC, Agriculture in the Classroom is a conference for
teachers to attend to get graduate program and/or ACT 48 credits. It is a whole
week focused on different aspects of agriculture ranging from mushrooms, to
livestock, to trees, gardens and bio-energy, to name a few. Teachers from across
the state attend, teaching a variety of subjects and ages. This was a super
great experience, to be able to meet such as diversity of teachers. A math
teacher told me to incorporate music into my classroom, for instance to not
call on someone until a song or music clip is done so the students will have more opportunity to think and form an answer. Or to have a sound clip
on almost every slide to act as an attention grabber and make the students pay closer attention to what is on a screen. Music can also be used as a reward if the
students are working well on something – and it can be taken away as a punishment.
When I traveled around with Owen Weikert, the Region 3 Regional Organization Director, all day in Adams
County, I saw a lot of aspects of agriculture that I was
not previously knowledgeable about. I was able to tour an apple orchard. This orchard provides most of the apple tree starts on the east coast, stretching even to Michigan.
I had no clue that you could not plant apple seeds and that you had to graft
the variety you wanted on root stock. My student teaching school students
have an apple judging day; it is good that I will at least have a little
background knowledge! I also got to tour a dairy farm and see their milking
parlor, as well as look at Mason Dixon Dairy. During the meeting in the evening
I got to meet a lot of farmers in the area and even met a woman who writes
about agriculture for different publications; I am sure she will be a very
good contact in the future.
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| Interns with a PSU Alumni |
Pennsylvania Farm Bureau also treated their interns very
well. One benefit was to spend a night in Washington, DC. While we were there we met
with all of our congressmen as well as a senior policy person in the senate,
(who is a Penn State Ag Sciences Alumna). Going to all the meetings we walked or rode trains in tunnels underneath the buildings, even to the capital, making it very hard to keep my
bearings. I know that I
would not have ever been able to experience anything like this if it wasn't for
PFB. To wrap up the trip we went to the American Farm Bureau office and got a
tour of their facilities and met a lot of important people. Unfortunately their
internships are not paid, but even so, that still may be a great
experience/opportunity for next summer!
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| Interns on the Capitol steps in Harrisburg |
Harrisburg was great to see, as so many of the governmental issues that
directly affect our farmers begin there. We got to meet another Penn State College of Ag
Science alumni who helps to make sure the voting members know about agriculture. We talked about her position and the
different issues she deals with on a daily basis. It was also great to just tour the
capitol since I had not been there since 4th grade and it truly is a
beautiful building, something that Pennsylvania should definitely be proud of.
All in all this was a great internship experience. I went
into it thinking that I knew what to expect as I have known multiple people who
had gone through the program before, but it really reached above and beyond
those expectations. The experience I got, and the connections I made are truly
irreplaceable. Everyone that I worked with was really helpful and wanted to
watch us interns succeed in our lives. I know that they are sad to see us
leave, but also happy that there are three women that are just starting to
enter the workforce with a strong passion for agriculture.
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| Interns in front of the building. Thank you PFB! |
To learn more about starting on the path to having a career that makes a positive impact on the lives of students across the globe by becoming an agricultural educator, please contact the agricultural teacher education program at teachag@psu.edu. Follow us on Twitter at
TeachAgPSU, on
Facebook, or on our
blog!
2014 Dover HS Student Teacher
Jeanne,
ReplyDeleteHow is student teaching going? Are you being the room roving, exciting, non-dumb feeling, and music playing teacher that you said you want to be? For the first time ever, I have to team teach with a special education teacher. Being a teacher means that you are always a student. Remember if you are not having fun, then neither are your students.
Best Wishes,
Tina Argot
Math Teacher