Diving into Ag Ed with Ms. George at Dover

   

  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 statures that she runs her unit of instruction on, and then the kids were able to get right to work on completing their welds. Killian tasked her students with creating butt welds that had to withstand the prowess of their hydraulic press. The idea was that the hydraulic press should come down directly on the weld, and the weld should bend with the metal rather than snap off. So, the kids were trying out different techniques and patterns, as well as alternating different electrode types to see which one could best withstand the force and pressure from the press. Unfortunately, during my time, none of the kids were able to crack the code, so they will continue to attempt and complete this task the following day. 

    In her second class of the day, Ms. George was teaching her Small Animal Science class, and on this day we were looking at eggs and the results of a lab that they did involving egg membranes. The students in the class got to create hypotheses the day before, and today they were seeing whether or not the egg membranes would hold up or break and make a mess. Out of the three trials, one of the eggs did break and a small mess was made, while the other two actually held up and stayed in one piece. Then, for the remainder of the period, the students had time to complete individual assignments. Dover does things a little bit differently when utilizing their block schedules, they normally use the first half of the block for content learning or lab experiments, while the second half of the period is used as an "individual work period" in which students are completing assignments for that class. This breaks up the longer periods for students, which I can't really blame them for. However, I think this could certainly be planned for in a teacher's instructional methods. 

    Overall, it was a great day at Dover Area High School seeing Killian, and I am very excited for her future as an Agricultural Education Instructor and FFA Advisor.