Wednesday, April 18, 2018

SAE Visit

At Selinsgrove, the Ag Foundations class is made up of primarily freshman but also has a few sophomores mixed in.  Part of their classwork is learning how to use AET for record keeping which means that everyone must have an SAE that they can add entries for.  I had already seen many of my upperclassman's SAE projects over the summer and talk with them about their goals of how to grow or expand that SAE. 

For this visit I wanted to focus on the student's in the Ag Foundations class and see what it looks like when you are just starting your SAE and beginning that record keeping process.  Now I myself have been through this start up phase of learning the lingo of what is an expense, what is non current capitol, etc. however, when I did record books it was the older versions that were in an excel document; not in AET.  So I wanted to learn my way through AET with one of the students who was just learning it all too.  

I picked to visit with Maddie Haupt who is indeed a freshman at Selinsgrove.  Maddie is new to the
Maddie, center, wants to put the jacket she just go to good use! 
FFA chapter however she has already hit the ground running and has become actively involved.  She even received her FFA jacket at the PA Farm Show in January and hopes to put it to very good use, very soon.  When Maddie was talking with Mrs. Fry about what she should do as her starter SAE, she couldn't think of anything but she knew that she wanted to become even more involved with the chapter and learn all about what the chapter does.  So Mrs. Fry and Maddie decided that her SAE would be completing the Selinsgrove FFA's chapter scrapbook for this year. 


Now this is a pretty unique SAE in my mind but when you think about it, this is a great SAE to start with.  It helps Maddie to record how many hours she is putting into the scrapbook, what type of expenses can be tied up in completing the book and of course helps her to sharpen her record keeping and organization skills.  This SAE falls under the Exploratory SAE category and is a project that Maddie will not be expanding on for next year.  However this works great for both Maddie and the chapter since there is no reporter this year on the officer team.
How many laptops can we use for one SAE visit?! 

The Selinsgrove FFA chapter decided last year that they would steer away from the giant scrapbooks that other chapters usually make.  They have moved their scrapbook to be done completely digitally.  Maddie upload pictures to the chapter's Snapfish account and adds them to digital page templates where she can add captions and digital stickers to embellish.  Once Maddie is finished with the book, she just hits print and in a few days, a package comes to the school.  Inside you would find a book that is reminiscent of a child's hardback book.  It is bright, colorful and has all of the pictures printed right in the book instead of glued to paper or pages in the giant heavy FFA scrapbooks.
Maddie works very hard to make 
sure that the pages are just perfect

Since all of Maddie's work on the scrapbook is done digitally and Selinsgrove is a one-to-one school, we were able to meet for her visit over lunch in the Ag room.  I have an hour long lunch where I was able to sit with Maddie and she showed me how she puts pictures in the book and how to add all the extras to the pages.  We also were able to look at her record book on AET at that time too since it too is digital.  We talked about how many hours she had logged so far and how she never though that it would take so many hours to completing this book.  

I actually really like the idea of having freshman or new students to the program start off their SAE journey with a smaller task that might take only a few weeks or months.  This is a great way for them to learn where to enter things in AET and just be able to click around and get comfortable with the system.  Now that being said, I think that this could have a downfall because depending on what these records are kept on, the student might not be able to apply these hours towards proficiencies or degrees later down the road.  

SAE are graded on two different levels at Selinsgrove.  For the beginners in the Ag Foundations class, Mrs. Fry makes them have 4 entries per month (1/week)  that they receive a grade for.  It does not have to be a long, elaborate post but they do need to say what they did/how much it cost/ etc for it to count.  If you are in your second year or more of SAE, you are enrolled in the SAE class that students receive credit for.  This class requires students to fill out the application for an SAE grant in the fall, the application for a proficiency in the spring and over the summer you get to have an SAE visit with either Mrs. Fry or Mr. Swineford.  

1 comment:

  1. I think it is great you are learning the ins and outs of AET. One of the aspects of teaching agriculture that you will discover is that as much as we tend to hand on to traditions, things change. That is true of SAEs. There is no longer exploratory but now foundational. You might want to visit the National Council's new SAE guide. Feel free to reach out to me if you can't find it online.

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