The Power of YOUth and National FFA

This week's blog is going to take a slightly different direction because all of my classes were working on projects. This allowed me to work on my positive reinforcement and monitoring skills but most of the work done this week was done independently by the students. This gave me more time to absorb and take in all the aspects of NATIONAL FFA WEEK!

I am still fairly new to FFA, all the experiences I have had with it have been during my college career. This week I really started to understand just how amazing the program is and how awesome all the students involved in it are. When I attended FFA functions in PA I always felt welcomed but still felt like an outsider because I was always "the only one from New Jersey," as I attended different functions this week I finally got that "family feel" that everyone always talks about with FFA and it truly is a great feeling. I was welcomed by the high school students, that I had never met to attend a conference with them as one of their chaperons/advisers. 

Before I get into all that I would like to start out with what we did in the Middle School for National FFA Week. We put together our showcase on Tuesday. The students who helped with that were amazing, they each added I little extra touch to make the display cases look awesome! They came to the table with so many amazing ideas, they made it hard for us to narrow it all down to one. The final theme? "What are you waiting for? Ignite the fire for FFA Week!" Sadly in all the craziness of FFA Week I forgot to take pictures of the showcase! In the Middle School we also had an "underground spirit week" (we aren't allowed to have spirit weeks) but that did not stop the kids from showing their FFA pride. One of our Vice Presidents came up with the idea and she planned it all really well...

• Tuesday was camo day
• FFA Shirt day (I rocked my PSU Collegiate FFA Polo :) )
• Boot Day (except for UGGS)
• Blue & Gold Day

I have to say the coolest part about our underground spirit week was walking down the hallway and students who are only in FFA would come up to Dr. McLean and I and show us how they were supporting the theme of the day. It was a really great feeling and I really liked how it showed unity for FFA. The kids were so excited about it!

Now onto my high school adventures. I was able to attend Advocacy & Legislative Leadership Day (ALLD) with the high school as one of their chaperons/advisers. Before Thursday I had not had the chance to meet any of the high school FFA students before and I will admit I was a little nervous, they welcomed me with open arms. I loved speaking with the students about their SAEs and their FFA experiences. I had a lot of fun with the students and got to learn a lot about "taking on the adviser role" at a conference. We started out the day at The College of New Jersey (TCNJ) with a small college career fair. At the career fair I got to meeting Ms. Morey, who I actually knew from before. We live about 2 miles from each other at my home in Atlantic County, and both volunteered at the Atlantic Riding Center for the Handicapped back in the day! Talk about a small world!! From the college fair we ventured into the room where brunch and opening ceremonies was to be held. But there was a twist, we were all mixed up and no one from out chapter was sitting next to each other. As I made my way to the other side of the room I looked around to see if I could find a familiar face from our chapter, there wasn't one in sight. I sat down and introduced myself to the FFA members and we began chatting about their SAEs, how long they have been in FFA, where they were from, etc. By the time the first speaker took the podium we were laughing and having a great time. 

As we ate brunch many speakers took the podium and challenged us to think about ourselves, how we fit into the world of agriculture, and finding our passion for what we love. We heard from the New Jersey Secretary of Agriculture, Doug Fisher. He talked to us about how we fit into the agriculture industry and sometimes your future career will be related to agriculture and you may not even know it. He also told us that sometimes the path you want to take may not be the one that you will take, you may have a direction but you road map may lead you somewhere else. 

NJ Secretary of Agriculture

I think that one of the most powerful speeches given that morning was from Mr. Shane Jacques who is the Education Specialist for the State Officer Programs from National FFA Organization. He spoke about the trip the State Officers from all over the country recently took to Africa. He showed pictures of some of the experiences that they had over there. The pictures of some of the housing structures were a lot different from what we see here. He challenged us to think about the differences that American agriculture is making and how different our agriculture industry is here in America. It really set us up to think about the reflection that our State Officers shared with us as the next speakers. 

Finally, we got to hear from our Lt Governor, Kim Guadagno. She was very inspirational and I think out of all the speakers her message stuck with me the most. She told us about how she got to where she is today and she said "don't let anyone tell you that you cannot do something." She said that a lot of the jobs she has had was because someone told her that she could not have them because she was a girl. She said to let those words add fuel to our fire and help us to become determined to succeed. She was a very funny speaker and she was so proud of all the hard work that FFA was doing. 

Lt. Governor

While the other students attended a rotation of workshops with the State Officer Team members, I got to attend the special Presidents workshop with our Chapter President Ben. We toured the New Jersey Farm Bureau building and also the State Capital Building of New Jersey. I got to talk one on one with Ben about some of the amazing things that the high school chapter is doing and also got to learn about the history of our state. Surprisingly I have been to the PA State Capital Building a few times and the Nation's Capital Building but not the New Jersey Capital Building. It was a great experience for myself too. Upon our return to the conference all of the chapter presidents from across the state talked with our State President Kyle about some of the awesome things that each school does for National FFA Week and some of the things that they learned that day. To see all of them sharing ideas like that was really inspiring and I think that everyone got some neat ideas to take back to their chapters and maybe use next year for National FFA Week.

 

Various pictures from the trip to the capital

After a long day at the conference I attended the Burlington County Board of Ag meeting that night and got to see the officers preform opening ceremonies in action. I was told that I better study up the adviser part as well because we have 2 more meetings before the end of student teaching and I will be playing the role of the adviser in at least one of them! 

To cap off the week! We took all 6 of the classes to the high school for the petting zoo that they have each year. There were cows, pigs, sheep, goats, rabbits, alpacas, and some baby chicks. All of the students LOVED it! Each of their faces lit up as they walked in and got to pet animals that some of them may have never gotten the chance to see before. Perhaps the funniest part of the whole day was the boxes that students had to stick their hands in and guess what they were. Some of the reactions were PRICELESS! I was also very proud of myself because I made friends with a cow! (It was a  huge accomplishment for me, because cows and I don't always see eye to eye!)

I also had a nice time hanging out with some of the State Officers. I enjoyed having conversations with them and finding out about all their FFA experiences. This week I learned that the FFA part of the 3 Circle Model really is important and it make such a wonderful impact on so many students. It makes me wish that we had FFA in my high school, but I am thankful that I get to have these experiences now and can help keep FFA as a positive experience for students.  

 One of my students had some epic photo bombing skills (permission was granted to use this photo)

Our State President Kyle and I

Look out the Snowpocalypse is coming!!!

Another week started off with a 90 minute delay and with the thought of a snow day looming over our heads I started off the week prepared for whatever may come my way...which apparently is the Snowpocalypse!!! I am not sure about everyone else but I am ready for some warmer weather, we've gotten more snow here in New Jersey in the past 2 months than we do during an average winter...and there is still more coming! Yikes!

I was really excited for the lesson that I was going to be teaching on Monday. The lesson included using a graphing website and uploading the homework and uploading it to edmodo. I was psyched because this was the first time I was going to be doing something "technological" by myself! I was also nervous because due to the previous delays we kept pushing the time in the computer lab back because we wanted to give the students as much time as possible with this project and a chance to really get to explore the technology we were doing. After delaying the activity for about 3 days Dr. McLean and I decided that it was time to get the project done and that I would use the shortened period to demo the website and the uploading process for edmodo. I was fairly confident with the way my lesson went however I felt really rushed to get all the information in within the 20 minute time frame. I would have liked to have more time with the students I think that it really would have helped answer a lot of the email questions I was getting later on that evening. I learned that even if you provide written instructions and verbal instructions along with a demo sometimes the students still need guidance with what they are doing. Also shortened periods are not ideal for introducing the technology concept, however weather and other crazy events are unpredictable and as a teacher you are constantly adapting no matter what. Teacher adaptation should really be a super power or an art form, I am learning very quickly how to think on my feet and change things with the snap of my fingers! It is still challenging for me to do and I am not the greatest at it yet but it is a skill that I also hope to keep working on and add to my weekly goals list. 

I also completed a lesson the jobs within the agriculture industry. I had two different video clips to show the students. Then it happened...as we were watching "Dirty Jobs" Mike Rowe said "my a$$ is hanging out!" I WANTED TO DIE!!!! I was so mortified. I had previewed that video clips time and time again. I have no idea how I did not catch that. The students did not seem to notice but I could not stop freaking out on the inside. I cannot believe that I never caught that wording before! I know next time that I should listen a lot more carefully to the languaging of the video!

My favorite lesson this week, was the one that I got to do with my 8th graders. We talked about the history of agriculture and I had them put their art skills to the test. Each student was to create a mini poster of a date in US Agriculture History. The poster had to include the date, a description of the event, and a picture depicting the event. My first section was so quiet, I felt like I literally had to drag information from them, and I felt like I rushed through the lesson because as much as I was probing them to answer and make them think, and randomly call on them, I could not get anything out of them. The second section was much more interactive and really engaged in conversation. I thought it was really interesting to see the class dynamics between the first class (6 students) vs my second class of (9 students) those 3 students really do make a difference. I was really happy with the results and quality of art work I received from the students. My students seemed to really enjoy what we were doing because A LOT of them like to draw and doodle. When I told them we were going to hang them in the hallway and make the timeline they all seemed really excited and I think it even changed how some of them felt about the project!

Examples of students' work!!

I also introduced The Google Boards this week! I am so excited for these. This idea was discovered on Pinterest and it is a way for students to ask questions about topics being learned in class or something that they are just generally curious about. The students can post the questions to the board at the end of class each day. On Fridays I am going to take all the questions down, review them, and post the questions in their class groups on edmodo. Over the weekend students will have the chance to research and answer the questions. I am calling them "Weekend Web Wonders." I am going to keep track of the questions that students answer. Each time they answer a question correctly they will receive a small amount of extra credit (0.5 pts of extra credit per question they answer correctly!) At the end of the month I will tally up the points they earn and will add it to their grade. I have one for my 7th grade and 8th grade classes. So far the 7th graders are taking complete advantage of it! I am so excited to keep track of the progress and how well The Google Board works. So far so good! The Weekend Web Wonders start this week too! I cannot wait to report back on them!

The inspiration for the Google Board! 

This week I was also proud of how well I handled my classroom management skills and my questioning/ direction giving. Although it is not "perfect" yet I can notice myself getting better and better each day. I am also working on my wait time as well. It is hard for me to "wait." I feel panicked when there is a prolonged period of silence sometimes. I feel like the students are not following or engaged in what I am saying. I know they are processing what I am asking and saying but it can be a little unnerving. I find myself counting to 10 in my head before I probe them with other questions. This seems to be working because it gives me a few seconds to think of clarification questions to ask the students. I know this is something that a lot teachers struggle with and wonder how some of them get through the awkward silence.


Last but not least we have our Lucky the Ducky adventures for the week:

Lucky traveled to our FFA Poster Making for National FFA Week and our FFA Showcase meeting this week. He also blogged about his own experiences in the class and even survived the Snowpocalypse to make it to Penn State for the first Student Teaching seminar! He has had a very busy week but next week is going to be filled with even more fun filled FFA things! Stay Tuned!

Lucky enjoys blogging too! Check out the Northern Burlington Ducks Blog (link to come soon!)

Lucky helping to spread the word about National FFA Week with poster making!!

Inspirational Quote of the Week:

Technology HATES Me....but I'm trying

This week was another crazy week that house a snow day, two 90 minute delays and two "normal" days, one of which internet was none existent in the school!

I will say that I am happy that I have improved a little bit on my classroom management skills and I know they will continue to get better each day.

This week was the first time I was flying solo. I picked up both sections of 7th grade and I thought things ran fairly smooth...until Friday. I was all set to finish a mini project that we started the day before. The students were to survey 10 other people on what they thought the top 10 most important agriculture products were. We had the computer lab booked and I had everything prepared. We were going to do the class results together to get them familiar with how the website worked and then they were going to finish up class/for homework graphing their results. Everything was all fine and dandy until we found out there was no internet at the school. I will admit I panicked slightly but Dr. McLean and I had the discussion the day before about what we would do should that happen. I am so glad she asked that because had she not I think a panic attack would have started. My back up plan was to have them graph on paper. After we discussed it for a few minutes on Friday morning we decided to reschedule the computer lab for Monday because they students would get more out of the lesson by seeing all the resources available to them and by practicing using edmodo (a way we stay connected with our students and they can stay connected to class!) We then decided to show a video that talked about some of the work that goes into the production of milk, cranberries, and vegetables in the state of New Jersey. We also had a discussion on what shocked the students and what they found interesting in the video.

8th Grade AFNR was a lot of fun this week. We finished our unit on Classification with a project that had the students classify and create a flow chart to display their classifications. It was really interesting to see how the students react with each other in a group for a longer project and how each group classified the tools differently. (I wish I had pictures this week but forgot to take some, I will have double next week!)

My main focus on improvement for this upcoming week is with my direction giving. I have my directions written out well, but when I verbally give them they tend to be unclear. I am not sure if this is because I am trying to make sure I am being thorough and I am just over thinking it and complicating them with lots of words. I am working very hard to improve this skill and I know that like my classroom management it will come with time.

Another fun addition to the week was attending my first official FFA meeting. I got to read the adviser's part and give a small presentation to the FFA members so they could learn a little bit more about me. I am also going to be in charge of the showcase that we will be making for National FFA Week. I am so excited to work with the students, they are already coming up with some really great ideas.

I also received a "Retired Racing Duck" which was named Lucky the Ducky...thanks to the two little boys that I live with. Each week I will taking Lucky around with me and posting a picture of our adventures together, here on my blog. This week Lucky will be joining me at Penn State on Friday. Stay tuned!

Inspirational Quote of the Week:

“Since she’s going to be a teacher she has to know EVERYTHING”

 Week 2 is coming to a close and looking back a lot of interesting things happened. We said good bye to our current 7^th and 8^th grade semester students and welcomed in 2 new sections of 7^th graders and 2 new sections of 8^th graders. Just when I thought I was beginning to learn the names of the other students I have to learn a whole new batch now.  So far so good learning names but I am nowhere near a pro yet.

On Sunday into Monday I learned the value of saving your work in multiple places and saving it frequently. Being the genius that I am I left my power chord for my laptop at my house and while working on things for the next day my laptop DIED! Yeah it died, after I had a panic freak out for a few minutes and I prayed that what I saved was still on my flash drive, I begin thinking about what I could to adapt to make sure I had something to do with the students the next day.

I decided to do an activity that I was going to do on Tuesday. It went okay but I thought that it would have been a lot better had I had done it the last day of the marking period. However, on the other hand when I finally got to do the intended lesson for Monday I got some really awesome reactions.

Would you ever eat an insect? That is the question that my 8^th graders were posed with on Tuesday. They all assured me that they would never ever eat one…but they were wrong! I had them thinking that I was going to bring in real insects for them to eat (I tried so hard to find some for them!) but could only find gummy worms. We discussed the different insect delicacies from around the world. The students were really interested, grossed out, and worried that I was really going to give them an insect to eat. The sighs of relief from the students when they say the gummy worms was very comical. I also explained to the students that although gummy worms are not “real” insects, they are still made with insect products like bees wax and red dye. Let’s just say I am pretty sure some students will never eat gummy worms ever again! Although my flub was not intended or planned, it worked out because I think the 8^th graders has a really fun last day in their semester agriculture class! Yes, things had to get shuffled around a little bit I learned how I am going to change things for next time such as creating a web quest for the students go learn about the different countries that consume insects and hopefully having some real insects for them to eat!

Onto the 8^th Grade AFNR course, these guys are the year longers. This past week I have been observing Dr. McLean during one AFNR period, I take notes and see how the activity works and then I teach it the next period. This week we talked about classification and dichotomous keys. To learn about classification we discussed how animals are classified. We learned that a “Queen” is a female cat and that students really feel like they are going to get into trouble when they use the term designated to a female of the canine family (dogs, wolves, foxes, etc.) During that lesson the students had so much fun and laughed so much, I am pretty sure one of them starting crying! We also did classification examples with shoes and candy. During this course a comment was made by a student about how I knew all the terms for the specific animals and they asked if I had a cheat sheet. I did have one but I explained that I learned all of this during my college animal science course. After having said this, another student said “yeah don’t you know since she’s going to be a teacher she has to know everything.”

This made me think just how much information teachers actually do have to know and that students really do look up to you and some actually believe that you do know everything. It also scared me a tiny bit because as a teacher you are responsible for their minds to grow and change, you really have to make sure you know your facts before you tell them something wrong. I knew about that before but when I heard that student say that it really put it into perspective for me.

Classification practice with shoes!!

One thing that I know I need to work on with all of my classes is classroom management. This is something that I have struggled with and one of the skills that I really hope I can continue to improve on. I know that I will not know how to do it right off the bat but it is something that I know that I need to be strong in because there are going to be different situations and things that arise when I will have to use them. Each time I teach I try to improve a little more on these skills. This week I feel that I improved most on making sure I had the class’s attention, sometimes I would just have to stop and wait for them to finish, and this seemed to work because they quickly realized I was not very happy because the topic of conversation was not class related. I still had a few hiccups here or there but I was proud that I improved a little.

Wednesday afternoon I helped FFA make their posters for National FFA Week. I had a lot of fun talking with and getting to know some of the students that I have in class. After I shared some of my experiences with them one of the students turns around in his seat, looked at me and said "Wow Ms. Rigg, you really fit in here well. A lot better than I thought you would." I was flattered and thought it was funny because I think most of them did not know I had as much agriculture experience as I shared with them. They also seem really excited that I will be getting to help them with the Horticulture Expo and Spring CDEs too! 

The rest of the week was about getting to know the incoming 7^th and 8^th graders. They seem like they are going to be 4 really unique, different, and fun classes to work with. In my second 7^th grade period of the day I do have 2 life skills students. They are the sweetest girls in the world; they are always smiling and saying hi to everyone. I think that the challenge with having them in my class will mostly come from the accommodation work that will be needed for them. Both need work that is of a 2^nd or 3^rd grade level, the challenge will come in with trying to find that level work that actually relates to the topic we are learning about, however since there are so many resources available to teachers today I think I will be able to fulfill that for them. I am going to the "Art of Environmental Education" workshop at Shaver's Creek this Saturday. This workshop is going to be geared more towards elementary level students, I am really hoping I can find some cool things for these 2 girls to do while I am there!

To end out the week we were in the computer labs learning about how to use edmodo in the classroom and of course we had to talk about the Super Bowl and its relation to agriculture!! All the classes seemed to enjoy the presentation and were really shocked at how much the agriculture the Super Bowl has in it.

Side Note: Footballs are made from cow hides but the air pocket in the football was originally made from a pig’s bladder and they would inflate that to hold the air! Pretty cool!

Finally…probably the funniest thing that happened this week was when one of my new 8^th grade students was trying to sneak into class without anyone noticing him because he was late. This particular student was pretending he was a “ninja”…yes I said ninja you did read that right, and was slow motion tip toeing and James Bonding it into the computer lab to get to his seat. When we asked him what he was doing he looked at us and said “you didn’t see me come in late because I have awesome ninja skills.” I tried to hold it together but the fact that he was dead serious with his answer made it even funnier. I think that the class that he is in is going to be a very interesting one but I am excited to start teaching them soon especially since they are really really excited about my community based unit of instruction that I have shared with them (don’t worry you will get to read more about that in another post we are still trying to finalize dates right now but I am excited to start moving the process forward!)

I am getting excited for week 3 as I take on the 7^th graders solo. Monday we will be learning about what agriculture really is and how it is important to all of us.  Thanks for reading! :) 

Inspirational Quote of the Week: