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 repe...

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 th...

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 a...

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, shoe...

 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 woul...

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 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 a...

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...

I was able to visit Courtney at one of her SAE projects. She is a Sophomore this year and an FFA officer. Her career goals are currently to become a large animal vet. She is not enrolled in an ag classes this year due to her high level of science classes, but she is enrolled in an independent study for SAE.  She has multiple SAEs but the one we visited was where she works at a local vet clinic. She is a vet tech assistant essentially. The clinic was Friends for Life Vet Clinic. There they focus on mainly cats and dogs, all pets, and they have no large animals.  During the visit, Courtney showed us a tour of the clinic. She took us through the different exams room, kennels, surgical areas and discussed how things were organized and ran at the clinic. Courtney works along side the vet and vet techs to help make sure area is cleaned, tools and supplies are organized, and animals are taken care of. Unfortunately, due to insurance reasons, she can not assist with any surgeries or p...

 I was able to visit Dover Area High School and their Ag Program with Michaela.  It was a great visit  and cool to see another program that is different than Honesdale in many ways. This was a 3 teacher program and had brand new facilities since it is a new school. I think it would be nice to have the support of 3 teachers and have someone in your corner essentially, but I also think that can bring some challenges too.  The classrooms were newer which was nice that they were updated, but 2 of the 3 teachers had essentially regular classrooms. With that they were more crowded with the bigger classes they had but was still nice to have new technology and resources. While I was there, I got to visit their greenhouse where most of their plant science class takes place in and also is one student's SAE project. Another really cool aspect to their greenhouse is it is connected to the classroom through a head house. I think this can help with management and would be a nice s...

This week I was able to bring a bottle baby goat, Champ, from my house into to class for the week, which was an awesome opportunity for my animal science class to learn hands on.  I always have talked about how I want to create hands-on opportunities for my students to get real life experience and I was able to do that. We went away from my unit plan somewhat and the students just got to learn. This goat had issues with breathing and his front legs so students had to brainstorm how to fix this and take care of this. We are between animal health and physical exams units so this fit in pretty well.  The students decided to try and splint his legs and we also practiced giving shots and taking vital signs. Along with this I made students take records of everything we did to Champ which was perfect for talking about keeping records. It is a lot easier to talk about how to keep records and why that would be important while the goat is right in front of you.  I hope as I continu...

How do we best give up control for students to inquire but still manage their safety and learning?   This week we made yogurt in my intro class which went well in the fact that they enjoyed making and tasting, however, going forward I want to think about how can I better set up labs to make them more meaningful. In an ideal world, this lesson was supposed to be 3 days but due to a snowday it became 2 lessons with no day for provide context or background so the first day we had to help students moving to get the yogurt ready to set and the second day was taste test along with a few conclusion question but with having students at all different paces there was no real wrap up so how do I make that meaningful? I do plan to go back next week and review what happened, but what tips are there to have student inquire without background but still help them get the content you intend? In my animal science class we did the tracking the spread lesson which the students enjoyed and it went extr...

This week was busy as usual, here are a few highlights! We started out the week with Spirit Games, which is most definitely a must see event at Honesdale high school. Students take a pause from classes for the day compete against the other grades for a ultimate winner in a variety of games from volleyball to relays to dance battles. It was cool to sit back and watch all the students come together and get involved. I have never seen something quite like that but hope that my future school does some sort of activities to get student involved. We also had our strawberries come in this week for our fundraiser. I was able to see how Honesdale ran their fundraiser and ideas for when I am completely in charge of a fundraiser. One nice part was we were able to keep them in the head house and after school students and parents and others came to pick up their strawberries and then the students were responsible for  delivering the strawberry orders that they got. I think this fundraiser was f...

In honor of Valentine's day this week, we tried to mate our temporary class pet, Hippity Hop, the rabbit. Our first breeding was unsuccessful, however, we brought in another buck and we are pretty confident that it worked but we will see in about month. I am super excited to see what happens and so are the students. We had just finished our reproduction unit and now we are onto genetics, so this was a perfect way for the students to see the content in real time. I also had the students guess due date, litter size, and offspring colors where they used the information we had been learning in class.  Also, this week in my intro class we dove into our food science unit. We had discussion based classes all around food waste, consumer demand, and food security. It was really cool to let the students led where we were going while just facilitating and of course, adding in definitions and information here and there. The students started to think about global issues and really divided into ...

 Another busy week that ended with a Friday in State College for a cohort check in and mock interviews is complete. I think it was week 5, which means we are 1/3  of the way done student teaching and that is simply insane. This week I finished my first unit in animal science, picked up my intro to ag class, started transplanting in the greenhouse, got a temporary class pet and a whole lot of things in between. I do feel like as we are going the weeks continue to get busier and busier and I feel like they will be like that until April, but I am enjoying it.  As I said I picked up my intro to ag class this week, which is a lot of freshman. My CT and I always joke that they are the breakfast club, because they are quite the bunch, but I enjoyed taking over that class this week. In that class, I decided to try out the interactive lab notebook we learned about during the Inquiry Institute. I am a little nervous, but very excited to see how it will work. I had them create their...

Let me just say I have the best CT and students, on Wednesdays we have club period for students to go and work on club related things so we have an FFA meetings. This week, they surprised me by decorating the room and donuts with candles, which was super sweet and fun! This week was also a short week with winter weather causing school to be closed on Thursday and Friday, which is when we were supposed to be reviewing and testing on my first unit in Animal Science, so per usual we stay flexible and we will just start next week with that.  Along with flexibility, my lesson plans changed a little with what the students wanted. so this does not happen all the time, but when the students are really interested in something I think it is important to cater to that to help their learning. So on Tuesday I gave the students a choice if they wanted to wrap up breeding methods and AI with a mini debate/discussion with a partner or if they wanted to have a class debate the next day. They were a...

Week 3 is in the book.. which is completely wild in my opinion.  This is was my first full 5 day week of animal science with having a short week last week. The highlight of was that we had an Estrous Party for our cow that the class named Connie. We helped Connie prepared for pregnancy, lived through the "heartbreak" of her not getting pregnant, had to help reset her cycle (aka the party), and then celebrated Connie's pregnancy. The students loved the activity, they were super engaged and I think it helped them to understand the estrous cycle a lot better.  Some things I learned from this were setting clear expectations are important and sticking to them. For example, one student wrote BYOB on their invitation which he tried to convince me it just stood for bring your own beef, so I ripped up the invitation and said it is time to start again. This students have been pushing his limits since the beginning.  Fast forward to study hall coverage late that day, I find out the ...

 It has been a short but busy week. Monday we have scheduled off because of MLK day and then Tuesday was a school day. So we only had a 3 day week which consisted of a club period schedule, two hour delay, and a regular schedule if you want even to call it that...each day is most definitely its own adventure.  With a snow day on Tuesday, I picked up my first class of student teaching on Wednesday, Animal Science. You'll never guess the unit...animal reproduction...one girl even prepared me the week before that she would laugh at all of the terms. However, I will say I am blessed and I truly do have pretty good students who were patient with me as I started to get my footing this week.  As I said, we started animal reproduction so that means we got to do two dissections. One Thursday and one Friday. The one dissection was ram testicles and it was challenging, it took me a while to figure out which part was which so on Thursday, my CT and I broke them into two groups and we...

I have survived the first week of student teaching... It was exciting and overwhelming and new and interesting and filled with learning.  Watching all of the new members put on their jackets for the first time, parents being recognized, new chapters being chartered, and seniors receiving their keystone degrees...my heart was full! This week started with mid-convention which was a lot of fun. This was my first mid-winter convention, as well as most of my students and it was cool to experience that along side of them.  Honesdale was also won the ag issues competition while there so they will be headed to National Convention in October, all of the students were shocked and excited! While I was able to go to convention with them, it was a good experience to see what it looked like to have students receiving awards and competing in competitions and how that could work.  The rest of the week I was able to spend in the classroom observing and meeting students and faculty. Tuesda...