Collaboration of Agricultural Educators

On Wednesday, April 13, 2016 Ms. Smith and I attend the PAAE Southeastern regional meeting at Cumberland Valley High School. I have always looked forward to attending these meetings as they offer a great source of knowledge and collaboration among agriculture teachers in our local community.

At this particular meeting I was overwhelmed by the amount of leadership that is within our agriculture community. Ms. Smith demonstrates her leadership in various ways each and every day. However, at this particular event I saw Ms. Smith take on a different leadership role in which she was in charge of running the meeting. I was very proud of her and the way she demonstrated her leadership abilities throughout the evening.

We had various speakers at our meeting, and one speaker was from the Center for Dairy Excellence. I have spoke with these individuals before about the numerous resources they have for agriculture teachers and I feel like each time they give a presentation they have something new to offer. I learned of a curriculum of resources they have including lesson plans, activitie sheets, and labratory activities all focused around the dairy industry.

In addition, I am always amazed by the newest news from the department of education regarding agriculture. It never ceases to end. One topic of interest to Ms. Smith and I was the topic of the NOCTI exam. This caught our attention as we just gave the pilot exam to a our 'completers' and these students will be taking their NOCTI exam on April 22, 2016. I still struggle with the data collection and identification of students in our CATS and PIMS data records but Ms. Smith and I are currently working with our school administration to ensure that our system is up to date.

Overall, I enjoyed the meeting with our fellow agriculture teachers and I look forward to attending the next meeting to gain more information and knowledge.

~Ms. Timmons

"Learning ignites curiosity we never even knew we had"