Visiting Manheim Central

On Tuesday, April 3rd I had the opportunity to go visit my fellow cohort member, Miss. Angie Becker at her cooperating center of Manheim Central.  I would have loved to go visit all of the members of our cohort and see what rock star things they are doing at their programs however there were 3 big points that drew me to visiting Manheim.

1. Adult Education Program
If you are involved with agriculture education or FFA in the state of Pennsylvania it is a well known fact that Manheim Central has a very strong adult education program that teacher Deb Siebert is very passionate about.  The Young Farmers organization at Manheim is extremely strong in membership which is made of farmers and other agriculturalists in the Manheim area that come together to discuss current events in the agriculture industry, work towards certifications and brainstorm ideas of how to support other farmers and the youth leadership organization (4H and FFA) in Lancaster county.  I was curious to see the school and environment where this blooming adult education program stemmed from.

Great visualization of what Urban Encroachment is! 

2. CASE Curriculum
Selinsgrove does not teach using the CASE curriculum and it no secret that I am not completely comfortable with the curriculum which was another reason that drew me to go visit Miss. Becker.  Manheim does utilize the CAE curriculum for their EEE class that all freshman take as a science credit.  This is a really great idea to incorporate this curriculum into your program as a science credit that also doubles as a recruitment material.  They are able to get all of the freshman at the school into the Ag room and they are able to see what other classes are doing as well as hear about the opportunities of SAE and FFA.  This class is also a perfect example of how agriculture directly applies to other classes such as science.  This class teaches students about the environment, ecology and how they connect to agriculture.

3. Three Teacher Program
My home program was a single teacher program that grew to having an additional teacher who taught  ag classes a few periods of the day but for the most part I only ever knew what it was like to have one teacher.  When I was looking at schools to student teach at, I knew that I wanted to see a program that had multiple teachers and what that dynamic looks like.  Selinsgrove has two Ag teachers that I have been able to work very close with and who have a great relationship and balance to their program.  Manheim has three ag teachers!  I was curious to see what it looks like when you have that additional person.  As the saying goes, many hands make for little work, which is true.  With three Ag teachers, it does help to cut down on some of the work load and responsibilities but I wasn't sure how that balanced looked until I saw how great Mrs. Siebert, Mrs. Anderson and Mr. Werning worked together at Manheim.  They each are able to take a different pathway of the program and offer more class options for the students to take.  Mr. Werning teaches the Ag mechanic courses, Mrs. Anderson covers the animal sciences and Mrs. Siebert is the plant, environmental and ecology expert at the program.  I used to think that I wanted to be a single teacher program since that is what I had only known.  Now I see that a multi teacher program is able to provide more class options for students and splits up the work load for those teachers a little.  It was nice to see how these teachers collaborate and work together.

Injections Lab for BQA certification! 

On top of going to check out these three aspects, I was also able to see Miss. Becker feel right at home teaching some animal science and help a class of her students work towards a certification for Beef Quality Assurance.  I also did this with my students so it was really fun to see her students engage in a similar activity as mine did.  I also got a personal tour of their greenhouse and see all of the varieties of tomatoes that they will sell in the May at their Heirloom Tomato Sale.  I loved my day that I was able to spend with Miss. Becker at Manheim Central High School's Ag program.