Calling all Vice Presidents! #FLC #reflection

Facilitating workshops has been a passion of mine since I have been in college. I enjoy teaching students from all different areas, create innovative and fun workshops, and of course being outgoing and having a blast with the students that attend the workshop. This past Monday, the 2016 Student Teacher Candidates at Penn State were asked to lead a workshops to the newly elected student officers from different FFA chapters around the state about their positions and requirements that they have based on the National FFA Handbook. I had the opportunity to work with Erin Yoest who is a 2016 Student Teacher Candidate and a junior Danielle Johnson who is also enrolled in the Ag Education program. So let’s break down the FLC preparation, presentation, and lastly goals for next time!

Preparation:

Planning a two and a half hour long workshop can be tricky for workshops and even teaching! You have to plan out a lesson plan, supplies, and create ways for your students to be engaged the ENTIRE time! Erin and I worked on the lesson plan to come up with our objectives and ideas about how we were going to facilitate the workshop. Our grand theme was based on the game of “Wheel of Fortune”! The students were going to have to spin our handmade wheel to gain points and guess the phrases which were the objectives! After our creation of all of our ideas and a practice run with Danielle we were ready for the workshop!

Presentation:

To summarize the experience that I had, I bulleted the ideas and thoughts I had:

- Students are NOT awake at the beginning of workshops.

- Being a facilitator is more than just presenting information... You have the opportunity to connect with your students and I was able to leave that workshop confident that those students were going to remember me!

- Don’t be afraid to let the students work harder on an objective to really dig deep         down and think about the objectives!

- Regardless if other workshops get out early, make sure you finish your last thoughts before dismissing them!

Goals for next time:

After completing the workshop and dismissing the students for lunch, I sat down and thought about how the lesson went. There were some students that weren’t engaged to their full potential BUT there were some students that were engaged and were talking with me that I knew that even though I couldn’t reach that small percentage of students, others liked the lesson and hey we did a great job! Some things I would change if I did it again:

- Allow co-facilitators opportunities to give direction more and have myself take a step back.

- Give students time to work with different groups to get a different gauge of the different ideas that were in the room.

- Allow more time for questions and clarification at the end!

Overall, FLC was an amazing opportunity and I am so glad that I was able to work with my peers on this workshop. I was able to evaluate my teaching strategies and engage with different students which made me so happy that I choose to be an Agriculture Educator. If you ever feel that you aren’t impacting your students, then you are wrong! Walking out of there, each one of those students were smiling and were prepared to go back to their chapters with new ideas and strategies that they can implement in their own chapters! We do make a difference!