OVATA

Many Agricultural Education graduates may remember teaching to their peers in the basement of Strand Hall in the AED 554 - Micro-teaching class. Thanks to a great partnership with Woodburn and Dallas High Schools, the micro-teaching experience becomes much more real when our student teachers have the opportunity to teach in front of real students instead of their peers.

The two-day adventure began when half of the class traveled to Woodburn and the other half to Dallas for day one of teaching in the agriculture classrooms. On day two, the student teachers traded schools. Each student teacher developed and taught two lessons - one for Dallas High School and the other for Woodburn High School. Student teachers taught lessons in small engines, careers, woods, pesticides, osmosis and diffusion, cell functions, dairy cattle lactation, horticulture, the FFA Creed, and were evaluated by their peers.

Woodburn High School is truly a school within a school concept, as our student teachers taught lessons that integrated science into agriculture in the Woodburn Academy of Art, Science and Technology. The Woodburn experience provided student teachers with a positive view of teaching in a multicultural setting. Andrew Hartenstein commented that "teaching at Woodburn High School provided me with not only a multicultural experience, but also the opportunity to see how science is integrated into agriculture in more of a non-traditional class." Seth Stoddard was not going to let us leave Woodburn without the opportunity to enjoy authentic Mexican cuisine at world famous Luise's Taqueria.

At Dallas High School, student teachers had the opportunity to teach in both Tim Ray and Lauren Farmen's classes. Dallas High School provided a wide array of teaching experiences, from careers to woodshop. Karie Hoffman commented that "peer evaluating my classmates provided a different perspective and allowed me to not only watch them teach, but to also really see the class and students from a different perspective."

The Woodburn and Dallas experience provided real-world teaching experiences in settings that helped prepare student teachers for careers in teaching. Peer evaluations, OSU faculty, and host teachers provided valuable feedback in a realistic setting that will help student teachers hone in on technical, pedagogical as well as classroom management skills.

Dr. Misty Lambert just made history at Oregon State University.  The Agricultural Education Program at OSU is over 100 years old and Dr. Lambert has the distinction of being the very first female teacher educator in the program's history.

A product of a high school agriculture program, Dr. Lambert was a North Carolina State FFA Officer, a North Carolina Teaching Fellow, and a Coca-Cola National Scholar.  She has had some unique experiences during her four years as a high school agriculture teacher in North Carolina, including a chance to teach in both single teacher and multi-teacher departments and in both urban and suburban settings.  During her high school teaching career, Dr. Lambert chartered a new FFA chapter and alumni chapter.  As a high school teacher, Dr. Lambert taught everything from horticulture to small animal care, to biotechnology.  If that wasn't enough of a challenge, she spent her evenings teaching a class in plant identification at the local community college.

Who is out there in that classroom?

Summer is gone and with it goes flexible schedules to accommodate all of the things neglected from the previous nine months. Those who attended State Fair have now run out of excuses to avoid the painful teacher in-service meetings the week before the start of classes. So what is left to look forward to now that the three-months of bliss is over?

I envy the classroom teacher. I personally miss the beginning of school since I have left the formal high school setting. Well maybe not the first week as that was a harsh reality check of getting back to a structured life. However, professionally I was always excited. I viewed the start of a new school year as a measure of my individual growth and a gauge of the strength of my program.

Rachel Kostman (Phoenix HS) - Rachel’s goal is to know everyone student’s name by the second day. In order to get to know her classes, she uses a “Getting to Know You” activity page to get students out of their seats and comparing with each other. At the end of the activity every student shares one item about themselves, and Rachel does the same about herself. See Rachel’s handout here under the Resource Share.

Dennis Clark (Union HS) - Dennis uses technology to engage his students on day one. Using TurningPoint clickers, he uses an interactive welcome to get kids hooked. See his PowerPoints here and here in the OVATA Resource Share.

Nick Nelson (Blue Mountain CC) - Nick wanted to know every student’s name by the end of the first period, and made a competition of it. He took students outside and put them in a circle, then had then go around a put an agriculture or animal term with their name that started with the same letter. The challenge was to see if he could repeat everyone’s names by the end.

He also ‘tested’ the students the first day with his Keep-Cull test to see “if” they could stay in the program, albeit with a bit of tongue in cheek. Check out the Keep-Cull test, now used on college students, here.

Need more ideas? Check out NAAE’s Communities of Practice. A particularly useful post can be found here. Icebreaker activities and a pig personality test are just some of the ideas!

Enjoy the first days of school!

By now, it should be fairly obvious that tough economic times are upon those living in the United States, maybe especially in the state of Oregon. With Governor Kulongoski’s mandated 9% across the board cuts to state agencies, many school districts have been faced with drastic budget cuts, and with those cuts, the precarious positioning of some Agriscience and Technology programs.

For many AST instructors, primarily those in rural areas with an agricultural economy, the fear of losing a program is minimal. However, with forecasts of state revenue reaching even greater shortfalls, that confidence can be a bit presumptuous, even in places with strong support for agricultural education. Therefore, it is necessary for agricultural educators to fortify their programs in order to protect and preserve perhaps the most valuable educational program there is.