Taking a Step Back

 My ninth week of student teaching was different from prior weeks, as I had to journey back to State College for our mid-internship seminar. While I spent Wednesday through Friday at the seminar, I was still in the classroom on Monday and Tuesday. I spent those two days reviewing material for a written assessment, grading presentations on invasive species, working in the metal and wood shops, using soil texture triangles, transplanting plant plugs, and using concepts like Ohm's Law to complete word problems; if nothing else shows you the diversity among content in ag sciences, this should!

The seminar was a great opportunity to take a step back from my student teaching internship and reflect on my experience up to this point. Listening to reflections from my cohort members helped me to put things into perspective and see more of the forest through the trees. I loved getting to hear about all of the cool things that everyone is doing and thinking about ways that I could adapt activities to fit my teaching style, whether I use them during student teaching or in my future classroom.

We also got to find ways to connect to resources and service learning opportunities in the community. We had guest speakers from Penn State College of Ag Sciences and from Extension talk to us about utilizing them as a tool in our classrooms, which opened doors to lots of future possibilities! We also began a service learning project with Shaver's Creek, which is a nice way for us to experience this type of project and figure out how we can help our students through similar projects in the future.

This experience is flying by and I can't help but reflect back on how far I've come! What's your favorite student teaching memory?