Cultivating Curiosity with Ms. Cusate

One of the high-impact experiences we get to engage in as part of #PSUAgEd23 a microteaching experience, where we get to enter a high school classroom and teach three days of instruction. For my microteaching experience, I got to travel to Greenwood High School in Millerstown, PA to teach in Ms. Krista Pontius' agricultural leadership classroom about advocacy. Day 1: Tuesday Day 1 of my mircoteaching went well, but was content heavy. I wanted the students to understand what advocacy was and why someone would want to advocate for what they care about. The students were engaged and answered my questions well. I ended up having some extra time at the end of the period, so I spend some time getting to know the students, and overall, I thought it was a good lesson. Teaching on Day 1 at Greenwood High School Day 2: Wednesday Day 2 was pretty eventful. We did an activity that drove into the four step effective advocacy model (Plan, Develop, Do, Reflect) by going through stations of a scen...

Last Friday was nothing short of amazing as I taught at my Cooperating Center for the first time! For #AEE412, the members of #PSUAgEd23 were assigned to teach a Life Knowledge lesson in their cooperating centers.  When I was perusing the Life Knowledge lessons on the National FFA website, I could not find a lesson that I thought would really let me connect with my Agricultural Leadership class the way I wanted to, so I put my own twist on one of the lessons about finding your leadership style. For my lesson, I had planned to have the students in the Agricultural Leadership class, the Albion FFA officer team, take the Myers-Briggs personality test. Then, we were going to see how our personalities contribute to the overall success of the team, especially during our chapter’s most prominent events, such as the Lake Erie Maple Expo that began on Friday.  Helping a student with the FFA Creed in 2nd Period! I thought the lesson was great! It had the potential to be effective and me...

  Last Friday, #PSUAgEd23 had the pleasure of attending the 2022 PA Agriscience Inquiry Institute presented by master teacher Ms. Krista Pontius! We had the opportunity to explore inquiry-based methods of instruction and activities to implement during our student teaching experience.    There was so much learning and excitement packed into our 10 hours together! Our cohort of 12 pre-service teacher candidates had the opportunity to work with 12 agriculture teachers from all around Pennsylvania. I really enjoyed getting to meet new teachers and catch up with some familiar faces. However, the best thing about being paired with an established agriculture teacher was hearing all their ideas about the ways they would implement and change the methods and ideas we were presented to their classrooms. It helped to hear how some of the activities could be connected to other content areas and how we could take it one step further to maximize student learning and engagement.  ...