GOALS Program: Gearing Up for Minnesota

 Hi there! 

As I write this blog post, I have just finished packing up my things after making my way back home to Lancaster. Tomorrow, I will travel with three friends in the #psuaged24 cohort (Noah Phillips, Paige Rohrbach, and Emily Jay)  to Philadelphia for our flight to Minneapolis, Minnesota! Noah and I will be spending the week with Mr. Eric Sawatzke at West Central Area Secondary School in Barrett, MN (Paige and Emily will be spending their week in the neighboring school district).

The four of us are participants in the Global Orientation to Agricultural Learning (GOALS) program created by the Global Teach Ag Network. This program is funded by a USDA-NIFA grant and connects college students at Penn State and the University of Idaho preparing to be agricultural educators with a year of professional development opportunities. Throughout this academic year, I have taken a fall and spring semester course for the GOALS program, attending weekly classes on topics ranging from global food security, instructional design, and reflection on our experiences.

The highlight of the GOALS program is a fall and spring immersion experience. This past October, I participated in the fall immersion at the World Food Prize Foundation's Borlaug Dialogues in Des Moines, Iowa. Our PSU crew traveled to Iowa and met up with our peers from Idaho and learned about global agriculture content while participating in the sessions at the conference. I learned a great deal and got to see the 2022 World Food Prize be awarded in the Iowa State Capitol to Dr. Cynthia Rosenzweig, a scientist with NASA!

Since October, I have been working hard to prepare a week's worth of lessons to teach during the Spring Immersion. In December, we learned that Noah and I had been placed in Minnesota with Mr. Sawatzke, and we couldn't be more excited. The school recently held a grand opening for their new greenhouse and works hard to make a difference in their local community through their FFA chapter. This will be an incredible experience for us, as we each are responsible for teaching one class for the entire week. This experience will be great practice for student teaching in the not so distant future! I have learned a great deal as I have made my lesson plans and created a personalized reflection guide for the students to work in throughout the week.

This upcoming week is spring break at Penn State, so it will be nice to fully invest in the experiences we have in Minnesota. Although it is a bit of a different spring break location, I am pumped for the opportunity to teach and experience agricultural education in a new state (and also to ice fish, snowmobile, and ski :) ). I think I've packed enough warm clothes and am ready for the week in store - we will find out soon enough! Stay tuned to hear my reflections after the trip.