What I Seek in a Cooperating Center

 



    When it comes to looking at cooperating centers for me, there are multiple different facets that I took into account when checking out programs that I could possibly end up student teaching at. With my obligations to the wrestling team, it seems as if I will have to stay rather local so that I could possibly travel back and forth from campus. So, essentially I would probably be looking at Centre county along with surrounding counties like Blair and Clinton county as well. Personally, I wouldn't mind getting away a little bit for my student teaching, it just may not be logical if I want to continue wrestling during my time in school here at PSU. I think that a cooperating center that I am not super familiar with would be good, especially since I have spent so much of my time around here, so it certainly would not hurt to get away from a chunk of time while I am student teaching. 

    Moving on from just location, I am looking for a cooperating center that would be more ag science-focused versus ag mechanics, simply because I believe I am pretty well versed in ag mechanics and could use some work in environmental science and natural resources. I think being in a place that would force me to understand and learn the ins and outs of that side of the classroom instruction would be good. I am also looking to find someplace that has a strong presence in their FFA program. In high school, I did not do much with FFA simply because my school's organization did not have the greatest supervision and was poorly run in my opinion. It made it pretty tough to get involved, and a lot of the organization and learning were put on the students themselves. Because of this, I feel like I need to get an even better understanding of the FFA program and want to be involved with a program that is well-run and has been established for some time. 

    On the more personal side of things, I would like to have a cooperating teacher that may have young kids and has to balance that with their work life. I want to have kids someday too, so I think it would be good for me to see how that works and maybe learn strategies for balancing home life with their work-life throughout a school year. Along with this, it would be cool to find a teacher who coaches as well, simply because I would love to coach wrestling while I am teaching, so seeing that dynamic during my student teaching experience would also be interesting and would be helpful to me. 



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Looking Back on a Split Student-Teaching Internship

Image
       If you had told me a year ago that I would have quickly fallen in love with a school, its students, and its community, I probably would have told you that you didn't know what you were talking about and to wait and see in a year or so. Well, if that was the case I couldn't have possibly been more wrong in my assumptions. I always tackle everything that is presented to me in life full boar, even if the way I do it isn't perfect, I always make up for it with effort and determination. When I got placed at Central Columbia with Mr. Doug Brown, I was thoroughly excited about the journey I was going to embark on with my unique student-teaching situation.      I can honestly say that I could not have asked for a better experience with my student-teaching. I got to see the end of a school year, which included everything from NOCTI and Final Exams, to students getting ready to graduate and checking out for the year in the middle of May. I had the opportu...
Read more

Diving into Ag Ed with Ms. George at Dover

Image
       During the month of February, I had the chance to take a break from my daily wrestling duties during one of our recovery days and make the drive down to Dover Area High School to see fellow cohort member Killian George rocking out her student teaching internship with Mrs. Barzydlo and Mr. Bowen. Getting to see their agricultural facilities was really cool and the second that I stepped into the school and Killian's classroom, I knew that it would be a good day.      To start off the day, Killian got rolling with her Welding course. Dover does block scheduling so each class is right around 80 minutes, which differs from my cooperating school which does 45-minute periods. I like this aspect in some instances, especially when kids are working with ag mechanics. This gives the students more time to work individually and they really feel like they are making headway on their projects or items. In this class, Killian rehashed the basics of welding stat...
Read more