Britton's Blueprint

This is it, this is my last week student teaching. I don't want to have to say goodbye. I became close with a lot of the people at the school and the surrounding community. To my host family, thank you for giving me a place to live, and for letting me crash family dinners. To Mr. Honeycutt thank you for not only being a great mentor, but for adding me as a member to your classroom, FFA chapter and your family. Thank you for showing me around, sending me to strange places to pick things up, and for the crazy cool and fun adventures. To my students, thank you for letting me take over your classroom and crash you normal way of learning, thank you for never being afraid to do the fun and silly activities that I had planned, but thank you most for letting me be a member of your program. Not a day went by that I didn't feel welcome at a meeting or in the classroom. Thank you for teaching me about yourselves, and the community. Thank you for always being there to help and support

The week before our normal got disrupted we as the agriculture department were preparing for the maple taste and tour. A huge part of the maple produces on the northern region. People travel from all over the state to sample maple, and to tour other sugar houses.  At Northwestern the agriculture program has a sugar house on the school property how cool is that? Anyway this is a huge fundraiser for the FFA, selling their products they have worked so hard to produce these amazing products. Its even more cool that the students come up with the recipe for the product, and then create the product themselves. I loved be able to be part of this amazing program with the most amazing students. These students Identify the tree, tap the tree, run the lines, dump the tanks, run the RO machine, are there when the boiling is occurring, filtering the sap, running the filter press, and bottling the syrup. Even if it were 10pm, some of those students were still there, even if we were ru

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

Although Covid 19 came and I was not able to physically go to see another cohort member teach classes, I have been following my cohort members on social media. Everyone has done some really awesome things with their classes. It may not surprise all of you but Jess, and I have remained in really close contact through out this student teaching journey. Let me tell you about Jess, her and I met in 9th grade at Derry for local CDE's in the spring. Jess was the girl with the selfie stick ( I am not kidding, she carried it everywhere). We ran for state office together, went to gold toe socks together, and then ended up at Penn State together. We had our first college class together, NOT PLANNED. None of this was ever planned, but because it all happened we were able to become really close friends. When she changed her major to ag ed, we became even closer, spending more and more time together. Fast forward to student teaching we were both placed in the west, but were about an hour ap

This year is different, different for everything. This year due to the global pandemic that is occurring we were unable to have our regional meeting at HOSS'S. I know I was bummed out, missing a yummy (free) meal. Just because it was virtual does not mean that important business was not conducted. Jess, Brandon, and I were able to see each other virtually (better than not seeing each other at all). It is amazing to see the support that I felt from the agriculture teachers from the west. Because I am from the west and I love the west #west is the best. Something that was discussed, that I was very interested in was the fact that there is talk about making more agriculture standards on the SAS website. It is super frustrating making lesson plans and not having any science related standards that fit your lesson. I am really excited to see how PDE plans this out, and how it is followed though. Something that caught me by surprise was that LDE's (public speaking events) are in

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

At northwestern, there are two certified agriculture teachers in the high school building. One being Mr. Honeycutt and two being Mrs. Schmidt. They were fantastic together. Mr. Honeycutt manages the general ag, and Mrs. Schmidt teaches food science related materials in the food science room. During my prep (fourth period) I would wonder down to Mrs. Schmidt's room to observe the class. 4th period was the advanced food science students in the "chopped" class. If you have ever seen the tv series "chopped" you know what I am talking about. It is super cool to watch some really competitive students work really hard all week to get their recipe together and made for Friday (judging day). Growing up I LOVED helping my grandma in the kitchen, I still do. Having the opportunity to be able to spend time in a foods classroom, with students that love what they are learning was a dream come true for me. I was not only able to show some students some tips and tricks that

Being a member of Northwestern High School, I am able to see so many students that have so many different SAE's. The Entrepreneurship SAE is what I am going to mention in this blog. It was in the middle of summer, and my first time really meeting some of these students one on one with Mr. Honeycutt. I realized very quickly that some of them didn't know how to feel about me giving them advice on their animals/ projects. I can honestly say that this is the SAE that I am most familiar with, I raised beef cattle for my SAE projects while I was an FFA member. I feel as though I can really relate to these students that are doing this type of SAE project. While on My SAE visits we saw a few different Entrepreneurship SAE's. These projects varied from beef cattle, goats, lambs, dairy, and hogs. I have shown goats, lambs hogs and beef cattle. I gave the advice that I knew about the species, and I talked to them about their feed, and their different buying and breeding systems.

This week my students will be planning a virtual garden, these students will need to pick their plants, and then create a garden. They could use google slide, or another platform. While I am planning this material for my student to be working on this week, there are a few questions going in my head.  When we were in the classroom there were questions asked by me, the students would get about 10 seconds to think on the question then I would ask for responses. I am having a really hard time doing this virtually, I have been using google forms as part of their classroom experience. If I could tell that the students were not putting in the brain power to answer the question the way that I expected I would ask another question until we got a better class discussion.  It is really hard for me to have class discussions virtually.  I think that with everything happening around them can they work clear minded on their school work? probably not, I mean I can't. I keep wondering

With everything that is going on in the world, we have all been affected by this unforeseen craziness. This craziness has become the new normal. I never thought I would be doing online instruction. I am a person that does not really like to use technology a whole lot in my classroom, we are usually hands on. With me teaching though my computer, it is really hard to preform hands on instruction. I don't want to say that I was afraid of the online instruction, but I kinda was. Who am I kidding I still am. Something else I am afraid of is heights. So here is a story about how I got over that fear. I was at Kevin's work one evening and his co-workers were power washing a camper. Since I was the lightest and smallest one their they asked if I would be willing to get on the roof to power wash it. I know that I would be uncomfortable up there... but how many times have I talked students into leaving their comfort zone, to do something amazing. In my head I just kept saying, if my st

Over the past couple of weeks of not being in the classroom, but generating enrichment lessons though google classroom: I have learned a lot. These things that I am learning from those that I am "stuck" in quarantine with will be subjects that I can expand on with lessons with my students someday. These things could be body work on a vehicle, or learning large scale diesel mechanics. I learned that the more body filler you use the better, you can always sand off the extra, but when its too late you can't add more. This lesson I took to heart, just like teaching, you can always put a lot of effort into your lessons but when the class is over, that 42 minutes is over it is over. You really need to use each and every minute of those 42 minutes because you don't get more minutes if you need them in a one day setting. The next lesson I learned was about diesel mechanics. Always make sure your trailer and truck is greased. The grease is a lubricant that keeps things run