Spring Break Immersion Trip to Raleigh, NC

        This semester, I have been taking a class at Penn State that has prepared me to teach within a high school classroom for all of spring break. Last semester, we were able to pick our teaching location (I chose Raleigh, North Carolina) and travel partner. Though the trip is with a classmate, we each planned to teach our own lessons in the school. In class to prepare, I learned a lot about how to plan a professional trip, how to lesson plan for a weeks-worth of classes, and how to manage a classroom as a guest rather than the main teacher. Finally, spring break arrived and it was time to hit the road. 

        Our trip started off with a wrong turn that resulted in finding a stand selling coconuts and mangos out of the back of their pickup truck. They had the bed heaping with coconuts and cut one open as you bought it. They also cut up the mangos and covered them in 5 different spicy red powders and sauces plus salt–very tasty! It was an unexpected way to kick off a trip focused around global agriculture.

 The coconut truck.                            Grace, my travel partner, and I with our coconut and mango.

        Once in Raleigh, I was instantly excited to explore the city in the nice weather; trees were already budding and daffodils were in bloom! Grace, my travel partner, and I oriented ourselves and tested our internal compasses by avoiding using google maps to make it around the city and back to the house we were staying at. We found some Chinese dumplings for dinner at a dim sum restaurant. 

        The next day, we first met with Ms. Dinger, our host teacher, to finalize our lesson plans for the week. We met at a coffee shop and ordered some classic Southern biscuit egg sandwiches. We also explored the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. There was a traveling exhibit featuring the work of Christopher Marley on display that I found particularly interesting. Marley’s work focuses on displaying collections from the natural world in an artistic way. I liked the intersection it created between art and science. Many of his works feature insects and, since I have an interest for, and am minoring in entomology,  I enjoyed people watching in the exhibit to see how people reacted to seeing the different insects in an artistic context rather than a scientific context or outside crawling and flying around.

Ms. Dinger, Grace, and I discussing our upcoming week over a breakfast of southern biscuits.

        Monday was our first day in the classroom. Ms. Dinger’s classroom is located in a smaller building behind the school, right next to the greenhouse, school garden, and chicken coop. It’s also close to the forested area which is used both for teaching and hiking around. I taught the first period and I didn’t know what to expect, but I think it went well for my first classroom teaching experience. We taught part of the lesson outside since the weather was warm and sunny, and I found that moving locations helped refocus the students. 

   

            The resident greenhouse cat, Star.                 The school chickens.

        The school we were at uses block scheduling, so the classes are 90 minutes long and are held every other day. Because of this, I was able to teach my lessons multiple times which was useful to make improvements and changes to each lesson. Throughout the week, we aimed to teach about global agriculture in a hands-on way. To do this, we facilitated two larger projects.

        The first project required us to draw a giant global map on the hallway wall (with administrative permission). We then had each student pick a country out of a hat and research their top exports, top commodities, and an agricultural issue affecting it. We also had them come up with a possible solution to the problem that they found. Students then had to find their country on the world map and pin it to the wall. I found that students were more engaged in this activity that I had expected. I think it may have been because of the independence and responsibility they were given to each research their own unique country.

 

      

The hallway map that held each student's country research.

        I also found that students were surprisingly engaged in the final project we had them create at the end of the week. This project focused on the Sustainable Development Goals. Each student picked one of the 17 goals to research and answer questions about the importance and interrelatedness of the goal to the others. They then were tasked with creating a “quilt square,” a monochrome collage on a hexagon that represented their goal. All of the hexagons were then fit together and hung up on the hallway wall. Once the collage was “stitched together,” it left a reminder of the interdependence between the Sustainable Development Goals and the cooperation of all countries around the world to achieve the goals. From watching students create their hexagons, I found that even those who had not participated all week were invested in creating a polished piece of work. This solidified how important creativity and freedom are within projects and in the classroom in order for students to thrive in their learning and enjoy it.

  

Sections of the Sustainable Development "Quilt" project.

        Throughout this trip, I expected to learn about how the classroom environment works from a teacher’s perspective, about myself as a teacher, and about students, but I ended up learning so much more–not just in the classroom. For instance, I learned that North Carolina is very into bar-b-que with different styles from different sides of the state. Before this trip I thought there was only one style of bar-b-que. I also learned about different agriculture programs both at the high school level and the university level. We had the opportunity to meet with the current cohort of Agricultural Education student teachers at NC State. We also had the chance to meet Jon Davis who teaches Agriculture at the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics, a public boarding school near Duke University. It was neat to see Agriculture Education from many different perspectives, not only to see how broad of a field it is, but to see how connections and collaborations can be made to give students the most diverse version during their studies.

             

        Thank you to Ms. Dinger, Garner Magnet High School, my travel partner Grace, my professor Dr. Foster, and to USDA NIFA for funding this program and giving me the opportunity to participate.