First Day of Student Teaching! #backtoschool #psuaged16

"Ms. Murphy-Sweet, what time do we have to be back on the bus? Ms.?"

Taking a quick step back I realized that they were talking to me. Not as a chaperone, not as a random person sitting on school bus with them, but as their teacher on my very first school field trip on my very first day as a student teacher. This was pretty intense for a first day!

This year, the Farm Show in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania was celebrating it's 100th year as the largest indoor farm show event in the nation. On Monday morning, 50 some students from Walter Biddle Saul high school loaded up on two school buses to travel down to Harrisburg to see the event. Now, this was my 10th year attending the Farm Show but this time, I was traveling as a teacher, not as a tourist at the Farm Show.

As soon we arrived, the students had 3 hours to walk around and tour the farm show. Due to the fact that our students rely on city buses to take them home, we could not attend Midwinter Convention to make sure that we arrived back at Saul on time. Although we could not attend the session, I was actually able to walk around with some students and explain to them what the Midwinter Convention was and why it was so important for some students in their school that were receiving their Keystone Degrees. After showing them to Large Arena with all the jackets, their eyes lit up as they realized "FFA is pretty cool" kind of expressions on their faces.

Overall, the day was awesome. I was able to connect with students with one on one conversations and also connect their urban agriculture setting from Philadelphia to viewing a state wide agriculture program at Harrisburg. I look forward to helping students achieve proficiency awards and starting SAE projects that will help them walk across the stage next year to receive their Keystone Degrees as well.