What I Seek in a Cooperating School

I believe that every school you go to can teach you something different. When it came to me finding a cooperating center to student teach at, I needed to really think about what would be best for me. Some aspects that I have taken into consideration are the teacher, the courses, and their FFA chapter.

Teacher

When it comes to finding a teacher that I would want to student teach with I think the most important part is finding someone who is willing to collaborate and communicate well with you. I would like to be with a teacher who is passionate about their job and wants to see their students succeed. The environment that the teacher creates is also very important to me. I believe that if a teacher has a negative outlook it would create a negative environment in which students would not want to be in.

Courses

In a cooperating school I would like a variety of courses that cover many different topics. It is important to me that the school offers courses that I am familiar with like plant science and leadership as well as courses that I need some more practice with like ag mechanics and animal science. I would also like to find a school that would offer some type

of Supervised Agriculture Experience (SAE) course or opportunity. I have not had much experience with SAE in the past, so I would really like to get more familiar with that as well. Some extras for courses that I think would be beneficial are a greenhouse as well as some type

of living animal. I like that this provides students with a way to get hands on practice with some of the material that I would like to teach.

FFA

I would like a school that has an FFA chapter that is motivated. It does not need to be a large chapter, but one that has dedicated members that want to be involved. I believe that the chapters always have an opportunity to grow and I think it would be really great to see a chapter grow while I am student teaching.