Nearing the Finish Line

 Another week in the books, another week closer to the conclusion of student teaching! This week was one of the busiest yet. All of the kids came back full time, so now we are seeing everyone 4 days a week in person, Envirothon was on Tuesday, All In conference was Wednesday and Thursday evening at the school, I tackled a brand new class this week, many meetings, and all while still planning lessons and juggling teaching. Phew! Feels like I'm an actual ag teacher now!

As mentioned, the county Envirothon was this week. The FFA had three teams competing and they spent all of Tuesday morning in various locations in the school doing this. The competition was comprised of five stations: aquatic, forestry, wildlife, soils, and current events, which focused on water quality this year. Students had 30 minute per station, and they worked together as a team to answer a variety of questions in the topic area of each station. Leading up to Tuesday, we have been meeting as a group once a week to practice. We teamed up with the Environment Club, who also had a team. I had the opportunity to work with another teacher who advises the Environment Club and the two of us collaborated to come up with a plan for practice each week and work with the different groups during practice. 

All of that hard work certainly paid off and the groups did great! One of the FFA teams even placed third overall in the county! Envirothon was a great experience and I loved working with and coaching the teams. It is certainly something that I will be doing with my future students.

The other thing that happened this week was the start of Food Science. Originally, I was suppose to spend these last two weeks doing the class that I started student teaching with, but due to a schedule change, that class ended up not being offered for quarter four. Instead, I took on a new course: Food Science. This is CASE's Food Science curriculum and my first time doing a CASE course. 

I was very nervous to start this class. I don't know much of anything about food science, and I have never experienced CASE curriculum before. I can confidently say though, that I love the Food Science class and really enjoy the CASE curriculum. This week has been a lot of fun with this class and I love the activities and lessons! We are currently looking at pathogens in food and this week the students got to design their own lab to manipulate variables that would effect microbial growth. 

CASE has been a lot of fun to work through because its really showing me how to have more student-led activities and projects rather than teacher-led activities and projects. This summer I will be participating in CASE's AFNR curriculum and after having a little taste of food science, I am so excited to do AFNR and soon incorporate it into my future classroom.