Finishing up my third week as a student teacher brought some highs and lows. First, I need to clarify something. I have a B.S. degree in Production Horticulture and I have found that a lot of people don't know what horticulture is, and those who do associate it with floral design and landscaping. Now, this becomes a problem for me when I tell people that I studied horticulture because I don't particularly like cut flowers and I am highly critical of the North American obsession with lawns. So for those of you reading this, horticulture is more than floral design and landscaping. My passion is for fruit trees and vegetables, mushrooms and compost, and much more.

That being said, I have been struggling through a unit in the horticulture class that is on floriculture in which, yep you guessed it, I am teaching about floral design. It was difficult to get the students to be engaged when I don't have passion for the subject. After some critical feedback from my cooperating teacher, I designed a couple of lessons that really went well. The students were engaged, they were having a good time, and even I was having a good time. I believe that learning should be fun because learning is fun! And so that is something that I learned this week. Even if you are not passionate about a subject, find a way to make it fun and I believe there is almost always a way to make things fun.

Working with some silk flowers in the lab

How to encourage your students to do quality work

I can remember countless assignments that I was given in high school that I absolutely loathed. Part of the reason was that I just didn't want to do the work, but mostly it was because I didn't see the value in the assignment. They were just another thing that teachers wanted me to do so that they could get their kicks.

Now as a teacher, I don't want to put my students through that same ordeal, but I recognize that it is important to teach students things that sometimes they don't want to do. That is where I believe students should have a voice in some aspect of the project or assignment. I believe that when students are given the opportunity to decide what they can research and participate in a creative process that they will not only be more motivated, but they will do better quality work.

That being said, there will always be students who don't want to put in the time and effort to produce quality work. In that case, you have to push them to do good work. This past week I was given the task to assess research posters for the introduction to agriculture course. It was an interesting experience because I gave quite a few students failing grades. I think that at first the students expected to turn in terrible work and get a C maybe and then that is it. But when the see the 26% they suddenly see that they have to think and put in  some effort. I'll tell you though, they do work hard and they turn in significantly better work.

So, to encourage students to do quality work, give students a voice, don't give them stupid assignments, and push them.

Weekly Insights - Be nice to everyone

Weekly Insights

Be nice to everyone - coworkers, administration - beyond the I scratch your back you scratch mine and toward a sense of community

Good public relations is essential for community to support you as the agriculture teacher and the agriculture program in general. Without the community, the program cannot be successful.

There seems to be a common understanding that being an agriculture teacher necessarily means that you are absurdly busy at any given point during the year. We try to do so many things with involving the community, catering to the desires of administration, FFA events, Farm Show and fair events... the list goes on. I fear that there is so much pressure to do everything that we will fail them right. I am not really sure, but I can recognize the need for the agriculture teachers to delegate responsibility to others to ensure that they are not working alone and wearing themselves too thin.

Daily Summaries

Monday - Farm Show was a great learning experience see my Mid-winter Convention blog for more details

Tuesday - Early release due to weather. I observed all of the classes. All students are working on finishing their mid-term posters which are due on Friday or Wednesday.

Wednesday - School Canceled

Thursday - I facilitated the Ag Leadership class in preparing them for the Junior and Senior Prepared Public Speaking CDE. I think that it went really well as I helped them select a topic to speak on based on their experiences and interests. 

Friday - Mr. Biddle was at Farm Show so I was the Ag teacher for the day. The students finished up their posters and I taught a lesson on delivering a speech. The students are off to a good start. They have chosen their topics and are doing some research about their topic. Over the next couple weeks we will work on writing an effective speech and delivering it.

Upcoming Week

I will be taking over facilitating the Horticulture class and will co-teach with Mr. Biddle the Ag Leadership class. The Introduction to Agriculture classes will present their posters and have a quiz on the information each student shares about their poster (we will create the quiz and take 1-2 questions from each student). The Animal Science class will be finishing up their posters and presenting them this week as well. 

Monday - There is no school for students but is to be used as a day to grade midterms.

Tuesday 

• Horticulture - Finish Posters
• Ag Leadership - Farmshow reflection

Wednesday

• Horticulture - "Jigsaw" Activity with posters. Students will present and assess each others posters.
• Ag Leadership - Complete their manuscript outline. Lesson on speech structure.

Thursday

• Horticulture - Quiz on information from poster presentations. Select seeds from a seed catalog that will be used in the milk jug greenhouse project
• Ag Leadership -  Effective speech introductions. Complete draft of speech introductions.

Friday

• Horticulture - Introduction to the milk jug project and setup for the project
• Ag Leadership - SUCCES for effective speeches. Practice their speeches in from of each other.

Concerns/Questions

It is sort of weird being in someone else's classroom. They have their way of doing things and at least with Mr. Biddle it seems to be going very well. I have different a educational philosophy when it comes to some approaches, but recognize that I don't have experience teaching and so I want to gain as much insight from a veteran teacher as possible and then when I have my own classroom I can start to integrate some of the ideas that I would like to try out. 

MId-Winter Convention and PA Farm Show

Students who are joining the FFA and receiving their jackets 

Tie tying teamwork!

First off, I want to talk about how amazed I was at the
representation of the agricultural industry in Pennsylvania during the Farm Show. I mean, everything you could think of from mushrooms to bicycle frames made from wood to alpaca wool mittens! It was a great experience and it makes me excited to be a part of a great industry in a great state.

Now, putting on my agriculture teacher hat, man it is a lot of work facilitating that experience for students. Making sure that you fundraise to be able to take students to the show, make sure that all of the students' projects are at the show at the right time, that they are ready, renting vans/buses, making sure no one gets lost...the list goes on! As an ag teacher you have to be on your game all the time especially during times like that.

Mostly as I reflect back on the experience, I am excited to start a career in which I get to learn and grow daily doing something that I am truly passionate about with the support of many great people.

Tractor restoration project by Bald Eagle students

Getting My Feet Wet - A "Microteaching" Experience at Mifflinburg Academy

I had the opportunity to practice some of the teaching techniques that I have learning about this past semester as I "micro" taught at Mifflin County Academy of Science and Technology in Lewistown, PA. I taught some lessons that I wrote for my soils unit, specifically about what soil is and why it is important, how soil is formed, how to collect and prepare a soil sample, and a lab in which the students tested for macronutrients in the soil. I had a really good time and I think that the students did as well. The Agriscience teacher, Annette Sprenkel, gave me some excellent feedback and I am excited to be able to improve my teaching techniques. 

Students collecting a representative soil sample

Some key takeaways

What I need to improve:

• I need to prepare materials for the students like guided notes and handouts to enrich the retention of learning
• I need to ensure that I maintain professionalism throughout the lesson. I am still struggling with this, because I want to have fun and I want the students to have fun, but I need to be conscious and careful that I don't let the students forget that I am their teacher and that they are here to learn
• Transitioning from interest approach to lesson material and activities. Make sure that there is a clear connection and that adequate instruction is given

Some things that I did well:

• I made the students work and think. As a new person coming into the classroom and only being there for 4 days it is hard to develop a rapport with students and encourage them to feel comfortable to ask questions and participate, but I think I did pretty well with that regard.
• The students were engaged. I spent a lot of time thinking about interesting ways to teach soil properties and processes to design an engaging and interactive experience. There are a lot of things that I need to improve, it wasnt perfect, but the students liked it and during a formative assessment they rated their confidence level regarding the material on average at an 8 (scale of 1-10, 10 = very confident)
• I was able to learn every student's name and call on them by their name which I feel is very important

As a side note, I really like the CTE school setting with the block schedule. Forty-two minutes just isn't enough time!

(Pictures posted with permission)

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Lil' Wilburt (or Craig)

The animal barn. Pigs, goats, and rabbits

Inquiry Based Instruction - A Reflection

What is education? What is the goal of education? John Dewey was a harsh critic of educational paradigms that relied on the transmission of facts as educational goals. He believed that education was a mechanism of social change and as Paulo Freire incisively declared in "Pedagogy of the Oppressed," a "means by which men and women can participate in the transformation of the world" (the quote is often attributed to Paulo Freire but is actually attributable to Richard Shaull in his introduction of Freire's work "Pedagogy of the Oppressed).

So if education is not merely the transmission of facts, what is it and as teachers what is our role? That is a difficult question to answer, and as with most difficult questions there is no one right answer. That being said, there are many approaches to teaching which I believe come close to some of the ideals that great minds such as Dewey and Freire had imagined.

Inquiry based instruction is a process in which the instructor facilitates a learning experience that is directed by the student. It is based on the scientific method, namely: making observations, formulating hypotheses, developing testable predictions, experimenting, gathering data, and making conclusions which is followed by a scholarly peer review.

I know when we hear scientific method our minds are filled with images or thoughts of scientists in white lab coats pouring colorful liquids into test tubes or Doc from "Back to the Future," however, that is a very narrow perspective of "science" and a paradigm that we need to change if we want to encourage students to be excited about science. Stated simply, science is a systematic way of finding answers to questions that we have and you probably use the scientific methods unconsciously everyday.

Although I have very limited experience with inquiry based instruction, I recognize that more than helping student discover new things, it is about helping them through the process of discovering new things. In other words, it is about the process as opposed to the output. What is really powerful about inquiry based instruction is that learners learn how to learn! To be a lifelong learner you have to learn how to learn and learn effectively. And that is what inquiry based instruction is all about.

Think about it!

Throughout my study of education I have been striving to understand exactly how we, as educators, can help our students love learning. I have been frustrated because I feel that our current system of education in the U.S. is not conducive to the development of a love of learning, and that many times it has the opposite effect. I have often felt discouraged and disenfranchised, but at the same time I knew that there had to be something that could help me to empower students to love learning and effectively seek answers to questions that they would have. I think that I may have found a very important tool that can help me achieve this, at least in part.


Inquiry based instruction is an approach that utilizes the scientific method to capitalize on natural curiosity in our students. It is about the process of discovering new knowledge without a teacher to tell you what to memorize or do.  It is an empowering process for both the student and the teacher as they are edified by increasing their capacities to obtain knowledge from their own experiences with the world.

As I can't write everything I have learned about inquiry based instruction in this blog, I will write about something that I was having a difficult time wrapping my head around and that is breaking the culture of working for a grade. As I have written about previously, we know that we work in a "system" whether we like it or not. We have to assess learning and students need a grade to show how well they "understand" the material so that they can put it on their transcripts and get into a good university. But with that system, students aren't motivated by learning new and interesting things about the world, they aren't interested in discovery, they simply want to know what will be on the test so that they can get an A. I had been thinking about just telling the students that as long as they work hard they will get an A, but I felt that that left a lot of subjectivity in the assessment process.

In the article, "Inquiry-based instruction: How is it utilized" that was published in the Journal of Agricultural Education, the researcher used focus groups to better understand teacher experiences with inquiry based learning. A comment from one of the members of a focus group mentioned that although there are usually many right answers, the students are assessed not on whether or not they get the right answer, but how well they justify the conclusions that they draw from the data that they collect. I think that that takes some of the anxiety out of the the process and helps students to focus on learning instead of the grade. This really hit home with me and I am excited to be able to experiment with this approach.

I believe that agricultural education is in a unique position to provide inquiry based instruction in the context of agriculture. I think that it is imperative that we share out what we are doing to ensure that others recognize that we are not just training farmers, but that we are engaging our students in deeper levels of cognition in many different subjects that include, but are not limited to mathematics, science, reading, and writing.

I know I still have a lot to learn about how to empower students to love learning, but I am confident that inquiry based instruction is an approach that will help me accomplish that goal.

Thoron, A.C., Myers, B.E., & Abrams, K. (2011). Inquiry-based instruction: How is it utilized
accepted, and assessed in schools with national agriscience teacher ambassadors? Journal of
Agriculture Education, 52(1), 96-106. DOI: 10.5032/jae.2011.01096