Searching for Sucess

As many of you may know that it is my time to begin my search for my "perfect" cooperating center to complete my student teaching with. Now if I would have been asked last year I would have wanted to be as close to my home town as possible, but now I feel differently about this. It may be because I am living away from home and I have proven to myself that I can survive not seeing my family, my farm, and my cows everyday. Now living in State College is much different than living in my little town of Armagh, as sad as it is in State College I can not see cows from my window, not even my miniature donkeys.. I know BUMMER. I made a huge adjustment living in a city, hearing traffic from my bedroom, and not hearing cows moo.

I just made myself at home here in the "big" city and now I am looking for a new place to go to complete the next chapter of my Agriculture Education journey. I am looking for a school that is
larger than the one that I graduated from. Plant science is a must have for me with my background in The Indiana County Herb Study Group. I love plant education, although I do not have much of a background in environmental education, I would love to be able to go to a program that dabbles in this subject. If I were put in a program that did not have a greenhouse I might be a little sad, but this is all about learning.

I hope to end up in a place that Inspires students to do great things, to go above the expectations, but also have fun and enjoy what they are doing. I want to be part of a program that inspires me, that will teach me and accept me for my lack of experience. I want to be able to be comfortable in my school setting. I want to be able to watch students grow and take on responsibilities and knowledge.

Do I have my top list of programs? You betcha, but do I know the most about them? Nope probably not. I know that I have to have trust in the people that are involved in this process to be able to look at me and see where I fit, and where I can make the most for myself. I do trust my adviser(s) they know me and they know my expectations, they know were I lack knowledge, and they know where I can strive.

I have accepted that I will have to move away from my new home to make a temporary home for 15 weeks of my life. But when you think about a whole life time 15 weeks is only a short amount of time to be able to create an experience to grow from, to engage with students, to make connections, to learn my flaws as a teacher and to correct them. I know I will still miss waking up and seeing my cows and my miniature donkeys, but I know that where ever I end up I will make the most of the experience and I will be able to grow as a teacher, and that is all I could ever want form a cooperating center.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Participation is Success

Image
This week I was teaching three classes of really amazing students. I had my two classes of introduction to agriculture and I have added a large animal science class. I have realized that teaching two classes that are the same subject can be really tricky. It all really depends on the students in the class, I realized that in the first section I don't get as far in the second section. At first it was stressing me out that I wouldn't get as far in the first section as I would the second. Then I realized that the first section seems to be asking more questions, really awesome good questions. The second section seems to be a little bit more shy ( I am working on that). The state FFA officers came in, and I am super proud of the way my students responded and participated with the officers. They did whatever was asked of them, and I think they were able to learn a lot too. I loved to see my shy group of intro students really get into the activities that were going on around them.
Read more

Mock Interviews.

Image
I am super bummed that I had to get the flu, and not be able to join the rest of my cohort in state college and get interviewed with each other. With my time in college being slightly longer than others in the cohort, I didn't really think it was as important to have mock interviews. I have changed my mind since then, that is for sure. I have accepted Penn States offer into the special education graduate program, this program is an extra year. Within that year I will be able to be certified to teach special education in the state of Pennsylvania, and I will obtain my masters degree in special education. Both things I have felt strongly about my entire life. Back to the interviews, now something that I learned while I was at northwestern. The school district doesn't hire their substitutes, they have a company that hires them for them. I applied to be a paid sub, and I was interviewed by the hiring manager at Kelly Services. This was an important interview, I sent in my resum
Read more

What is a Placement SAE?

Image
I never really knew what a placement SAE was let alone know what it looked like. Over the summer Mr. Honeycutt invited me up to go see some SAE projects.  Near the school they have this really awesome camp, camp FITCH. It is an ohio YMCA camp, its not very far from the state line, but still in pa, and right along lake Erie. Two of our students had placement SAE's here. Kelsey worked with the horses and Drake worked with maintenance/ landscaping.  Lets talk more about what happens at the camp. This comes directly from their website. "  As a part of the international YMCA movement and an important element of Youngstown’s strong Association, Camp Fitch has grown a lot since it’s founding in 1914 on the banks of the Little Beaver River. Although the location changed to the shores of Lake Erie over 85 years ago, we still live by the Christian values upon which we were founded to model and instill in kids. More than 16,000 people visit Camp Fitch for at least a few days every
Read more