Blog Post 1: Introduction

Hello classmates! My name is Macey Kleinjan and I am a first semester masters student in agriculture education. I graduated in May 2017 from NDSU with a bachelors in agriculture education and then took the summer off from school to work, plan my wedding, and get married. I am still new to being married (June 17, 2017), but I love my husband and spending time with him. But, I have been telling people lately that I think getting married is similar to adopting a child because I often find myself doing many things for my husband that moms do for their kids! Speaking of kids, we have two cats (Skyler and Elliott) that I refer to as "the kids" or "the boys", because we treat them like our children. We are both from Mandan, ND and we don't have family in Fargo, but it is only a two and a half hour drive, three with summer road construction!

 Over the summer I worked as a nanny for my advisor here at NDSU, last summer I was a nanny for a family in South Fargo, so, as you may be able to tell from that information, I enjoy working and watching younger children. I enjoy more, however, learning about and teaching agriculture. As a requirement of the degree, I student taught in the spring of 2017. I was placed in Washburn, North Dakota and lived with my parents in Mandan while student teaching. I so much enjoyed teaching and being in the classroom/ shop that I dreaded going back to school as summer! But, after the first week, it isn't so bad and I think I can get through two years more!

I learned many things while student teaching. I learned more about myself as an educator, I broadened my content knowledge (being that Washburn has a way different agriculture base than what I grew up with), and I realized very quickly that lesson planning is very important, but sometimes can only be used as a guide because students often have a different plan for how class will go! I know I may be at a disadvantage currently in my education based on my lack on experience in a classroom, but I build off of what little experience I do have and am open to others sharing their experience and I take that in and apply it to myself.

I aspire to be a high school agriculture instructor. Not many people in the world grow up wanting to be an ag. teacher, but I did. I am hoping that my masters degree will help me analyze teaching and planning and will improve my ability to teach. I plan to apply to open positions in North Dakota in the spring of 2019, graduate from NDSU in May of 2019, then start my teaching/ summer contract soon after.

Graduation in May 2017     //      Hunter and I      //     Skyler (grey and white) and Elliott (tabby)



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Blog 2: Learning Theory Exploration

Image
Before I get going on my learning theories, I want to note that I only have three resources. One resource covers both theories and the other two cover enough information for each theory that I ended up not needing the other sources I found. Another point is the other resources I found were not exactly helpful to the requirements of the blog, so I left them out in writing the blog. One final note, at the end of the blog, after the references, I included some additional resources that you could use in the classroom or for yourself to get the ball rolling for these two theories! I chose Problems Based Learning Theory and Inquiry Based Learning Theory. These two theories have many similar ideas and overlapping areas of research and classroom application, however differ greatly in the roles of the instructor and the students. At first glance, they both encourage and require students to be active thinkers and apply a combination of new and previous information, mixed with their per...
Read more

Blog 4: Presentation Reflection

My group presentation was a lesson that taught how to use problem based learning (PBL), inquiry based learning (IBL), and experiential learning (EL), as well as how to implement these learning types using technology. To plan our lesson, we used the ASSURE model. At the end of our lesson portion of the presentation, we covered the ASSURE model and how it is implemented effectively. We started with brainstorming what we were going to do. We decided to use the ASSURE model to plan our presentation. We then started to think about how to alter it to make it into a presentation resource. We quickly concluded to teach a lesson as our presentation. We then decided three topics to teach and we each chose what we wanted to teach classmates about. To divide work amongst the three of us in the group, we each chose an educational theory and each completed an ASSURE lesson plan that detailed our plan to teach the class about our choice of either IBL, PBL, or EL. We then discussed how we we...
Read more