Placement SAE Visit

As a student teacher, one of the most exciting parts of the internship is getting to explore your new community. One of the best ways to do this is to visit students at their Supervised Agricultural Experience (SAE) projects, which provide an awesome way to get an authentic understanding of the local agricultural community. 

One of my highlights over the course of the student teaching internship was to visit Timothy, the Athens FFA Chapter Sentinel, at his Placement SAE project at Foote's Tire and Auto Service. Foot's Tire and Auto Service is a family-owned company located in Sayre, PA. Timothy does an incredible job as a service employee for the company, working after school and on weekends to perform tire changes, repair, adjustments for winter/summer tires and other tasks for customers. 

Timothy described how he has enjoyed working at Foote's over the past few years, learning a variety of skills and eventually being given additional responsibility. Timothy showed us the process of balancing a tire and ensuring that the process is done efficiently and correctly. Tim also showed me and Mr. Steinfelt a warehouse building with Foote's inventory of tires as well.

Throughout the course of the visit, I learned a great deal about tires myself! All tires have rather involved names that provide a lot of information about the specific tires. Some of these elements include a vehicle classification, tire size, tire type, and wheel size. I also learned a good bit about aspect ratios for tires, which measure a tires height off the rim when compared to its width.

Timothy logs hours for his SAE project in the Agricultural Experience Tracker (AET), making financial entries and journal entries about his work. As Timothy recently got his driver's license, he described how he is excited to be able to work more hours than he was previously. It is exciting to see Timothy working hard in his current role that he hopes will lead to full-time employment at Foote's following his graduation from high school. It is clear that Timothy is developing positive qualities of hard-work, responsibility, and leadership in his chosen career path! 

SAE projects provides such meaningful learning experiences for students as they apply what they've learned in the classroom in a way that is of interest/relevance to them. Timothy's project provides an excellent example of the value of work-based learning, which has been an integral part of the three-circle model of agricultural education since its earliest beginnings in 1928.