The Last Melon (I Mean Week)

The final week of my Student Teaching Experience has arrived! With Cumberland Valley's spring break chopping my last two weeks a bit short, I feel like the tail end of this experience really flew by. Before wrapping this experience up with a lengthy and sappy blogpost, I wanted to give you one last update of what I have been up to over the past few days.

The Officers At Banquet Practice

Here Comes BANQUET!

Over the past few weeks Cumberland Valley FFA has been working hard to prepare for their annual banquet. While I will not be able to attend banquet due to Post Internship Seminar, I have been privy to the work sessions and practices for this event. Way back at the end of February Ms. Romberger showed me how to prepare a banquet order from the National FFA Organization website and gave me great advice on the timing of this order. On Wednesday the Cumberland Valley FFA Officer Team got together to rehearse the banquet script and prepare the awards for the event. While I have practiced a banquet script myself as a member, this process allowed me to see how much work goes into creating the banquet script and making a plan for rehearsals. Seeing how to delegate responsibilities when it comes to preparing the awards for the event was helpful for me in my future banquet planning. I also enjoyed chatting with our senior members as they realized they were practicing for their last hurrah in FFA.

Flowers? In Plant Science?

Round Floral Arrangement Creation

In conjunction with our banquet planning, my Plant Science class has been hard at work learning how to make arrangements for the Cumberland Valley FFA banquet next week. Last week they designed a virtual banquet design proposal using suggested plant material, a budget, and a requested theme of blue and gold. This project was a fantastic way for the students to learn the business side of floriculture and how to interact with customers. After creating their proposals, each class in the program voted on them. We practiced how to make a round floral arrangement with live plant material and then revealed the winner of the virtual banquet design proposal. Using this design the class will be working to make the centerpieces for the Cumberland Valley FFA banquet at the end of this week and the beginning of next week so that they are ready to go for our blue and gold event. Throughout this unit I have learned a lot about planning ahead to order plant materials and completing lessons within a time frame. I also think the students really enjoyed the process of creating these arrangements as they applied the theory behind floral design with hands-on learning opportunities.

In all honesty the last week of this experience came a lot sooner than I thought it would, but I am so glad that this experience has been meaningful until the end. Be sure to check out my final blogpost where I will reflect on Student Teaching as a whole and catch you up on where I am headed next in the world of agriculture!

'Taylor'ed with love,