Week 12 of 15: Teaching At My Cooperating Center for the First Time + LEME

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 meaningful for the officer team, and I was proud of myself for including the relevance of the Lake Erie Maple Expo. I prepared all my materials, talked through my ideas with my lab teaching assistants, and felt more ready than ever to go into my cooperating center and teach my heart out!

However, when I got to my cooperating center, my cooperating teacher told me that it would be better if I taught the period after the Agricultural Leadership class, Small Animal Science. I would not be teaching the small group of officers that I thought, but rather a class of 17. 

But that did not shake me! #PSUAgEd23 is flexible, adaptable, and resilient! 

I quickly sat down and opened my laptop, editing my lesson plan to make it work by the time the students arrived. Instead of my original plan described above, we took the Myers-Briggs personality test and then made posters describing our strengths and weaknesses as the results showed. Then, we wrote one reason our strengths make us awesome and picked one weakness to work on and how. 

After, we wrapped up by talking about how each of our personalities brings something unique and important to the table, like a puzzle that would not be finished without them. I related it back to the Lake Erie Maple Expo by asking the students how they could use this information to participate in the different activities there. Answers varied but were mostly along the lines of how an extroverted person would talk to the vendors and greet community members while introverted people would rather do a more relaxed “behind the scenes” job. I think they understood the main idea - that our personalities help us determine the most effective job for us as we look at opportunities to be a leader within the chapter.

After school, I was invited to stay and see how the chapter set up for the Lake Erie Maple Expo, or as they call it, “LEME.” There were many experts in sugaring and maple production, all of which were sharing their knowledge and presenting their equipment and gadgets to make production more efficient. The Albion FFA officers opened LEME with FFA Opening Ceremonies and my cooperating teacher even let me say the advisor’s part, and I was “Here by the owl” for the first time! 

It was a blast and I am so excited to finally be in the classroom with my students come January. I am forever grateful that I get to be part of such an incredible community with such funny and accepting students! 

Thank you for your endless support,

Ms. Cusate