A "Casual Friday" with Ms. Grace Shawver

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Fridays...teachers love them. The weekend is coming, you get to wear jeans, you get to...visit Grace?

This past Friday, that's exactly what I did. I took a trip to Selinsgrove Area High School to visit my cohort member, Grace Shawver!

When I arrived to Selinsgrove Area High School, Grace met me in the office. I was really excited to see her program and meet her cooperating teacher, Mrs. Fry! I am from Bloomsburg, which is about 40 minutes from Grace's school, so I was looking forward to seeing a program close to home but different than mine.




Selinsgrove is on block scheduling and has 4 80 minute classes a day, while Northwestern has 8 45 minute periods. First up was Ag Foundations, where one of Ms. Shawver's students taught a lesson of agronomy for the Teach Ag Essay Contest! 

Next was Horticulture, where we spent some time out in the greenhouse getting ready for the plant sale the first week of May. 


The amazing selection of hanging baskets in the greenhouse!


Later in the block, we went over to the elementary school and worked on the green roof space! How cool is that? They prepared raised beds for vegetables and completed some general maintenance. We even found a Praying Mantis Pod!




The Praying Mantis Pod students found!



After second block, Ms. Shawver and Mrs. Fry took me to their Friday lunch. They said that the departments in the building rotate and make lunch for the teachers every Friday. This time, it was sloppy joe from the Math Department! I love that their school does this. It is a really nice way to meet all the teachers in the building and establish relationships with them. 

After lunch, there was prep time and Seal time. Seal time is a common free period they have at the school for meetings or study hall. All students have Seal time together so no classes are going on and all students can get the help they need or attend meetings with no scheduling conflicts.

Last block was Vet Science, and it was a blast! If you couldn't tell by my last blog, Vet Science kind of found its way into my heart and is so fun for me to teach, so I loved watching Mrs. Fry teach it. We started with another student teaching for the Teach Ag Essay Contest about the Black Plague, which relates to Vet Science because it was a zoonotic disease! Then, Mrs. Fry showed a video of a ruminant stomach dissection and went over it with the students. Lastly, students had to pick a digestive system make a poster of the four stomach compartments. The choices were monogastric, ruminant, cecal fermenter, and avian digestive systems, and once they picked one, they got to chose what animal they modeled it after. One group did their poster on Proboscis monkeys, which apparently are ruminants!




A textured, rubber model of the ruminant stomach compartments that Mrs. Fry uses as a teaching tool



Overall, I had a great time visiting Grace at Selinsgrove and meeting her cooperating teacher Mrs. Fry! They have a great program and it was nice to visit a good friend for the day. If you want to follow Grace on her Teach Ag journey, you can follow her on Twitter @GraceShawver or read her teaching blog, linked here: https://gshawver2638.wixsite.com/agmazinggrace


Thank you for your endless support,

Ms. Cusate



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