Ms. Walker's "Wise" Tales

Wow, it has been a ride, with highs and lows and everything in between. I have had a lot of fun and learned a lot along the way. I am excited and nervous for the next chapter but am definitely going to miss my time at Honesdale and all of the people I have met here.  I taught 3 classes while I was at Honesdale: Animal Science, Horticulture, and Intro to Ag. Animal Science was the first class I picked up and I was excited because this was my background. While I needed to work to brush up on my scientific terms and knowledge, I was able to gain a lot of confidence in what I knew from my past experiences. This was a 96 minute block, so some days it was a lot to plan for and other days we barely had enough time with labs, but gaining the experience in facilitating labs was one of the areas I grew the most. Coming into to student teaching I think I was obviously to how much students really need step by step directions and need to walk through these, they may even need the procedure repeated

My favorite and one of my best lessons was the skittles lab that I did with mainly freshman in Intro to Ag to kick off our Food Science and Processing unit.  Title of the Lesson: How does sight and smell affect our taste? Length of Lesson: 2 days (46 minute periods) Learning Objectives:     1.  Identify how lack of sight and smell affects taste based off of lab results     2.  Draw a conclusion of lab results connecting data and class discussion Target Audience: freshman/some sort of introduction lesson Link to Lesson A little more about my lesson:  During this lab, the students were blindfolded and tasted skittles to see if they could guess the flavor right and then they did the same thing again and but with their nose pinched in order to determine if sight and smell affect taste. I used this as the opener to our food science class and my students all truly enjoyed it. Another thing which took a little bit of time was that I had students write their own hypothesis and make a data tabl

Unfortunately, due to zoom issues I was unable to attend the PAAE meeting. I wish I was able to go in person, however considering the 2.5 hour drive and the timing it was not possible with my schedule at Honesdale.  However, from attending the meeting in the fall I was able to see the value of this organization and meetings. They help provide support, community, resources, and fun to agriculture teachers across the state. 

 I have been a GLAG intern the past couple of years so it was different not being as involved this year and being more of the consumer in was different.  I did enjoy that they made it through out the year because it was nice to join in on the conversation through out the year rather than all at once and feel overwhelmed and then unfortunately forget about some of those resources that GLAG provides.  One of the events I attended was the global farmer experience Growing Hope Globally. I enjoyed this a lot with it being interactive and being able to participate in the activity and not just hear about. Unfortunately, I was already done my food insecurity unit so I not able to fit it into a class this year but think it would be a good resource. I also think it could be adapted in many ways for different areas. And starting to think about how I use and able this in my environmental science class next year.  I also was able to touch base with GLAGreads through the program and after. It was co

Fun and tiring! Honesdale was able to take 2 van fulls of students down to Harrisburg for the weekend in order to attend ACES! Most of the students had never been to ACES because of Covid and the craziness of the last few years so it was exciting to see their excitement but also hesitant. Which after the first few hours was all good and they were just happy to be part of the club.  I was lucky enough to attend National Convention with Honesdale in the fall, but this time I was able to see what it looked like to just take students away for an overnight stay, but also what more students with an extra chaperone looked like.  Before we even left in the morning, we discovered one of  our dear students simply did not know he had to wear official dress… to be fair the past few years events and trips and lacked and he was not asked to wear official dress for a while but still *insert facepalm*. Good news though like any good ag teacher my CT has extra jackets, ties, scarves, shoes in the offic

 This was a short and busy week before Easter break.  In animal science, this week we worked on finishing up our pharmacology unit, with that it meant we were practicing injections. On one day we did a bunch of notes and background, which next time I quickly learned I have to teach this a different way next time. We did take some breaks and did some discussion and questioning, but I want to make it somehow more interactive for the students. The next the day we practiced giving injections in class, and because I think being able to do give the injections is just as important if not more important than knowing the information. Due to that they all got a lab grade on being able to draw out medicine/read a syringe, intramuscular shots, and subcutaneous shots. We went from demo to practice to lab check which the students did a great job working through.  We also practiced some other directions and students had fun with green dye and chickens still while being safe. I also would highly sugge

The last 3 weeks in my Intro to Ag class we have been doing all things engines, which meant we tore apart our engines and are currently finishing putting them back together. I was somewhat excited and also very scared to teach this unit. I have some background with engines from classes but did not feel comfortable in the subject area.  This is why I ended up choosing this as my DIY project was for my CT and I do disassemble and reassemble our engines. I learned a lot through just putting myself though what I expected my students to do. I was able to see some of the issues that my students may encounter, which has helped me be able to teach this unit.  Through out this unit, I have learned a lot about managing students in a lab space. We did a week of engine lecture before we started tearing them apart, which included the engine basics, 4 strokes, and safety. Then we started tear down. Some of the things that I found that worked well was using lab notebooks; it was really nice for them

For my second SAE visit, I visited Drew Rutledge with this rabbit SAE at school, however, I was able to learn more about his other SAE projects, as well. Drew is a Sophomore and an active FFA member, he has attended national convention with Honesdale in the fall, as well as ACES in February. He has variety of experience, interests and projects so I was excited to see what he was doing with SAEs during this visit.  Our class was gifted a rabbit, which became his SAE here at school, due to his past experience and willingness. This rabbit stays at school, where we waters and feeds her daily. He also cleans out the cage as needed.  For animal science, we decided to breed the rabbit, so Drew helped with that as well. In regards to breeding, the rabbit was not the best mother and Drew thinks that being at school with students interrupting her did not help. So unfortunately, we lost all the baby rabbits, but Drew was active in giving advice to the class, as well as coming in before and after

I think one of the most important things in education is help make students better citizens and be ready for the real world. So helping developing those soft skills are important no matter the subject. This week and every week I try to help challenge students to improve in technical and soft skills. Another important part of the ag classroom is making it relevant to the industry, any subject you can connect to an industry is extremely value to students. In my horticulture class, we talked all about fertilizers and dig into how farmers would actually calculate use and why this is a big problem right now. While they have a lot of industry and hands on experience in the greenhouse I think it’s important for them to also hear about other parts of the industry. So I was able to give them soil sample test and say here is our field what should we apply and why? It was cool to give them real world scenarios. In animal science this week we were able to learn about vital signs and physical exams