This week, I was "on the road again", this time with my Cooperating Center, Shippensburg High School! We traveled on a charter bus, and left on Tuesday morning with our sights set on Indianapolis, Indiana. It was great to be back with students and continuing to make the transition to "behind the desk".  On Tuesday, on our way to convention, we were able to stop and visit Ohio State's "Waterman's Dairy Center". This was a great experience, and the students' expertise was able to shine! I loved seeing the members relate the tour back to their own personal knowledge.   On Wednesday, we traveled and toured Beasley's Orchard, learning about how agritourism is able to keep farms going despite their hard times and bad crop yields. There was a corn maze, a bale tower, apple cannons, and lots of fun photo ops that we were able to take advantage of.  We also attended Opening Session on Wednesday with a very inspiring message from Tamika Catchings. Sh...

Friday Kicking off on Friday, October 14th, I flew to Des Moines, Iowa with the Global Teach Ag Network Facilitator Team to begin preparing for the World Food Prize Foundation Global Guides Conference. Our first interaction in Iowa was with a past Global Guide, Ernest Schiller. We spent the afternoon with him and talked about his work with Rebuild Nepal Education Foundation. This was a great opportunity to meet someone with so many wonderful experiences to share and advice to give! Saturday  Saturday was full of facilitation planning and flip chart making. I worked with Grace, my fellow senior intern and Allyson, a Grad student from Mississippi State to make over 120 flip charts as a way to track the sessions throughout the week. We made flip charts including essential questions, session goals, warm ups, and wrap ups to prepare for the sessions that began on Sunday. We also traveled to the Downtown Farmers market for lunch and enjoyed Pupusas from El Salvador. Next, I was able to t...

 This week for AEE 412 lab I was able to jump back into the teacher role after being away last week and highlight the International Agriculture Unit that I have written. This week's task was to teach a Problem Solving Approach Lesson using one of the 4 strategies. These include Fork in the Road, Factors Possibilities, Effect Cause, and Situation to be Improved.  We had some technical difficulties at first in lab and what was supposed to be orange in my slides was purple...oops! Despite these technology hurdles, we powered through! I was able to introduce a scenario where students were tasked with stepping into the shoes of a Smallholder farmer in Eastern Africa and make decisions about what crops to continue growing. My students (#psuaged23) worked hard to come up with 2 possible solutions, a list of 4 factors that affect both solutions, and facts relating to each solution's factors. I was very impressed with their creativity and International Agriculture knowledge, and I cann...

This week I missed hanging out with the #psuaged23 cohort, but traveled to Madison, Wisconsin to the World Dairy Expo. The World Dairy Expo is an event that brings together a global industry and showcases it for five days. The Mission of the World Dairy Expo is that it "serves as a forum for dairy producers, companies, organizations and other dairy enthusiasts to come together to compete, and to exchange ideas, knowledge, technology and commerce.  This was such an exciting and blessed experience, as I was chosen as a winner of a Dairy Shrine Award. Specifically, I was a winner of the National Dairy Shrine and Dairy Management Inc. Education and Communication Scholarship. This year at the Dairy Shrine's Banquet, they were able to award Dairy Students with more than $40,000 in Scholarships. I really enjoyed networking with the other winners before and after the banquet.  Monday evening in the exhibition hall my family and I attended the banquet where my eyes were opened to the m...