Throwback Tuesday, that’s a thing, right? Okay fine, depending on how you look at it I’m either two days ahead or five days behind the true #tbt. Regardless, I thought it would be interesting to post my MMA response I wrote this summer.

MMA, you ask? Master’s of Modern Agriculture. I took an abbreviated course one day while at Bayer and voila, MMA in my name. After viewing select videos and reading key details and information (yikes, common core standards vocabulary coming out without trying here) about modern agriculture, the certificate was all mine.  There was a 150-word limit to the response.

Here it is:

With only 2% of the population in the United States working as farmers, it is no surprise that many misconceptions exist among the general public about farming. The largest misconception is that farming is viewed as a traditional field of work. While farming has existed since the beginning of mankind, it continues to evolve and modernize. Most people are not aware of exactly how advanced the technology and applications of farming are today. To help resolve these misconceptions, I plan to bring my experiences observing the research and scientific method in action back to my fifth grade classroom. Furthermore, I plan to challenge my students to consider the connections between modern science topics (such as robotics) and farming. Educating students about the modernization of farming could also lead to more innovation for the field by piquing student interest and affecting their trajectory for higher education and career options.

What are your thoughts? Do you agree or disagree with the misconceptions and reasoning that I mention? Despite the certificate, I wouldn’t exactly call myself an expert in modern agriculture.

I’m glad that I decided to post this essay because after rereading my thoughts I realized that I have yet to find a meaningful way to incorporate the modernization of farming into my classroom. The good news is that it’s only October 6th and today I at least touched the surface by introducing the word biotechnology.

Bayer CropScience has an employee volunteerism program titled Making Science Make Sense, or MSMS. Employees receive time throughout the year to volunteer and can use it as part of the MSMS program or in any other capacity they see fit. MSMS has educational resources for teachers and employees for engaging students in science. Because this program is a Bayer initiative, and not CropScience specific, many of the resources do not directly connect with the awesome work taking place daily in the CropScience branch of the company. This leads to a situation situation in which CropScience employees walk into classrooms, introduce themselves, and proceed to carry out an experiment that is loosely connected to their introduction.

When it comes to genuinely engaging students in the work that takes place at Bayer CropScience, I am hoping to contribute to the MSMS program by creating curriculum resources that can be used by employees that relate to CropScience and have a focus on biotechnology. Throughout my time with Bayer this connection and opportunity to contribute to the company has been really exciting for me because it is such a natural way for me to be a part of what is happening at Bayer CropScience.

Another natural way I have been able to contribute to Bayer is by helping plan and lead Passage Home days on Wednesdays. Each Wednesday during the month of July, Bayer partners with a program in downtown Raleigh serving at-risk youth by providing programming for their summer camp. Students range in age 5-15 years old. Usually 4-6 employees volunteer their time to assist. In this opportunity, Bayer has found yet another natural way for me to blend into the company as an experienced teacher.

When I envisioned my experience as a Kenan Fellow I expected everything to be new. I had not considered the possibility that time and effort would be put into integrating me and my expertise into the company. Even if I had considered this possibility, it has been more empowering than I could have ever imagined to see my skills and ability originally developed in a classroom setting put to use outside of the classroom. This is not a take away I had thought about at any point throughout the application process, but I expect it to provide new meaning for my work when the school year begins.

Here at Bayer CropScience, employees keep development dialogues. This is essentially the educator’s PDP except that it is updated on a weekly basis and employees have conversations with their supervisors every other week in regards to goals. I’ve really come to appreciate this system and wonder what education could be if administrators had time to meet regularly with individual teachers to help with their development instead of the standard two or three times each year. While the meetings are not long, I see frequency as key for accountability purposes.

It will be interesting to see how well I keep up with this as school starts. I’ve already started thinking, dreaming, and planning some goals for the upcoming school year (one reason I love the summer break from school) and want to track them on weekly basis. In the development dialogues goals are planned and managed short-term (~6 weeks out), mid-term (6 months-year), and long term (five and ten years out). As a Kenan Fellow I am able to fully participate in this process and have been able to see some clear connections between my goals here and #teacherlife.

Bayer has a program called Making Science Make Sense (MSMS) that is coming up on its 20th anniversary. It is a community outreach program in which Bayer employees use their volunteer hours (every employee has a set number of volunteer hours he/she can use each year) to visit schools and conduct short, highly-engaging experiments in addition to explaining careers with Bayer. Employees have a list of experiments to choose from or they can make up their own ideas based on the needs of the teacher. Many employees opt to use one of the experiments. Right now there are not any experiments/lessons that are directly related to biotechnology in the database. It creates an interesting visit for any CropScience employee because the introduction he/she gives about his/her position and work is not related to the science that takes place after the introduction. This is where Stacey and I come in. We are using our experiences at Bayer to create MSMS materials that can be used by CropScience employees. I’m really loving this collaboration opportunity because it is such a natural way for us, as teachers, to work in this unique hybrid school-industry position.

As a teacher in a small, rural district we have little to no established common curriculum across the district (and for science you can forget anything for kindergarten-fourth grade) at the elementary level. Like everyone else, I spend a significant amount of time outside of school grasping for new ideas and not only researching for specific lesson plans and topics, but also learning about curriculum design however I can. I find it fascinating.

I love the openness of curriculum design, but most of all the challenge and subsequent reward when I am able to take that large elusive abstract concept, scale it down to a specific topic, and have students take away something concrete and meaningful. But let’s not get carried away here…most days it feels like 90% challenge, 10% success (and that’s if you consider it from the right perspective). It’s funny though how the 10% success can wipe away the frustrations of the challenging 90% in no time.

That also seems to be the very nature of being a teacher, not just curriculum and planning, am I right?

When I look back through my notes from our PD week at NCCAT scribbles and doodles are visible throughout. I tend to scribble when:

1) I’m in the zone

2) I’m engaged in what I’m learning

3) I have time to process what I’m learning

but most of all…

4) I’m dreaming about what I’m learning

If my notes are any indication, this was a great week for me professionally. It’s easy to get stuck in the monotony of everyday teaching. Naturally, my favorite part of the week was the ease of having inspiring conversations. You see after even a few short minutes with any of my fellows, I was open to being influenced and inspired by his/her ideas. This made it easy to listen, collaborate on, and consider the application of many different ideas. What a difference this made for my mindset throughout the week.

What was unique about this professional development experience for me was the opportunity to REALLY process the information I was learning throughout the day…not in the “talk to your neighbor for thirty seconds about what you learned today” fashion that I’ve become accustomed to. Writing. Meal conversations. Typing reflections. Answering the same question with more than one other person. I can’t necessarily fault other PD opportunities because let’s face it, we can’t always take an entire week and often have a lot of really specific topics to learn and get through in PD sessions. It also helped that we had many breaks and transitions so that I never reached a point of being too overwhelmed. Like I mentioned earlier about the doodling, there were scribbles in my notebooks! I place an exclamation point because it has been soooooo long since I have seen that in my work. I’m usually overwhelmed in PD and trying to figure out what pieces I want to take away as the lecture keeps going and I get behind, definitely no time for doodles. The narrative format of many of the PD sessions and option to access materials post-session helped me relax. I was able to avoid feeling the pressure to take away every bit and piece of the sessions I attended in real time.

Two areas in particular sparked my curiosity throughout the week:

1) Community engagement (including parent involvement)

I really started thinking about the state of parent involvement in my classroom and school as well as other community agencies. After thinking about this, I started thinking of ways to make involvement more purposeful. I really would like to find a way to empower parents in the school community and think of ways for community agencies to naturally take part in what we are already teaching. I’m in the process of developing a survey that can be distributed schoolwide at the beginning of the year for parents to mark their talents, skills, and hobbies related to curriculum taught schoolwide. The survey would be used to create a database for teachers to consult when planning. Instead of career day, how about having parents come in when the career directly connects with student learning?

2) Citizen Science

Previously I had heard of citizen science and was familiar with the basic premise but this week I was at the point that I could envision my students participating and am really excited about finding meaningful ways for my students to participate in the future.

Well I guess this is the end of the beginning. Now that our first PD session has concluded I can continue dreaming up and working on the ideas that were sparked during this week.

I have a problem. I can’t decide what sessions I want to attend for our concurrent session PD options tomorrow: Project Based Learning as a Differentiation Strategy or Integrating STEM Skills and Content in the Humanities? Too much awesome PD…I always like love a good problem! We’ve all attended some version of PD in which we were left skimming booklets for the options that appeared to be the best of the worst, am I right?

Overcoming this type of PD is exactly what I had in mind when I completed my application to become a Kenan Fellow. Now that I have spent a solid week in my internship and have also spent time with other Kenan Fellows I’m realizing the potential of this opportunity for my teaching career.

For me, this experience is not merely about my teaching career, but also me as a person. I followed a very traditional route graduating high school, immediately attending UNC, leading me to begin my teaching career. Here’s the thing…what percentage of my fifth graders will spend the rest of their lives in the education arena? Certainly not 100%, so for me the value of this fellowship lies in the experience itself of waking up, driving into RTP, attending meetings with gasp…adults, taking a lunch break, considering the multiple perspectives of a product cycle and efficiency, and so continues the endless list. Result: I now have an idea and concept of what it is like to work in the world outside of education. While I’m certainly no expert, I have new ideas in addition to those that have been shared with me by friends and family.

It is easy as a teacher to get caught up in planning great lessons and curriculum for my classroom and with my grade level at my school that I can lose sight of the bigger picture. The picture being that one day my current fifth graders ten, eleven, or twelve years old are going to leave school at some point and make choices about what they do outside of an education arena.

In addition to developing my own concept of what it means to work in the world outside of education, I’m really looking forward to being able to develop my voice as an educator and advocate for the needs of students. Example: in PD yesterday I broke down and finally obtained my very own Twitter (follow me @lhensler413). Quickly I started following educational organizations and other individuals passionate about education. As a result, I’m immediately more knowledgeable about an area that I am very passionate about, thus empowering me to be the advocate I want to be. You may be wondering what I mean by “the advocate I want to be,” what does that look like? What will I specifically advocate for? What drives my passion for those topics I want to advocate? Here’s what I can tell you: there is no definite answer because it’s flexible and always changing, just like the real world experiences I’ve had through my fellowship thus far. For tonight though, I’ve decided in light of already attending a PBL session, I’ll attend “Integrating STEM Skills and Content in the Humanities” tomorrow.

Growing up in suburban Detroit, my family took vacations to the Outer Banks in North Carolina. Ten years ago I moved to a rural town in North Carolina as a high school student and was surprised to find that agriculture was still a way of life. My experiences with agriculture extremely limited, I was slightly disappointed that I had better views of tobacco fields as opposed to the ocean I had pictured when my parents originally mentioned North Carolina. Fast forward ten years and I am trading in my teacher summer vacation for a summer trip into the world of agricultural education.

I think back to the fall when a robotics student asked me why the FFA high school organization was coming to visit our after-school club. Oh, how I wish I could go back in time to answer that question again! I’m currently four days into my six week internship with Bayer CropScience as a Kenan Fellow. Already, the applications and connections for my fifth grade students and curriculum are numerous.

Of course, naturally I think about the units I teach on ecosystems and genetics. I reflect on the tour I took of the bee care center and the passion that Bayer has for studying and promoting bee health. I also think about seed trait research being conducted in the greenhouse I visited this morning and connect this to teaching students about traits that are both learned and inherited. I see words on posters such as viscosity and density, science vocabulary that relates to the physical science component of fifth grade curriculum.

What about the other 21^st century skills I can take back to my students? Whether interviewing or receiving a tour from someone, I have asked what his/her goals are for the position. Surprisingly, every person has a people-related answer to my question. For example, a scientist mentioned keeping his team motivated when trials are unsuccessful. A fifth grader would expect the scientist’s goal to be success in research such as finding a successful trait modification. This demonstrates that no matter how tech-savvy our world is communication and relationship skills will always be highly valued, a take away from the week also echoed by the CEO I met Monday morning. In our world of instant gratification I wonder how my students would respond to working in a job in which they have to wait weeks, months, or even years to see results (whether positive or negative) from their work today. My kids could barely handle waiting a few days to receive their EOG scores last week. The product cycle can take 10-15 years from start to finish in agricultural science.

If I could go back and answer that robotics student again, I would challenge him to brainstorm ways that technology could help farmers. Afterwards, I would validate the student’s work and spend time explaining that farming is an applied life science that uses technology, including robotics, at every stage. Students have this perception of farming as being cows and plows; separate from the technology that they use every day. From what I’ve learned in four days, nothing could be further from the truth. Will I have a different answer in four weeks? I’m not sure, but I do know that I look forward to continuing to think about how my experiences at Bayer CropScience can positively impact classroom learning.

For years I have heard of the Strengths Finder assessment and its value over other personality tests. Fast forward to Friday afternoon when I arrived at Bayer to meet some of the people I will be working with this summer. After being mesmerized by the beautiful facility I was handed my first gift, Strengths Based Leadership. The book included my very own code to take the assessment! I could hardly wait and took the assessment after my drive to Charlotte to visit friends for the weekend before dinner. The strengths are in and they are:

Of the four main leadership domains of executing, influencing, relationship building, and strategic thinking, two of my themes are in executing, two are in strategic thinking, and my top theme, individualization, is in relationship building. Here is the description of individualization:

“By nature, you often marvel at your ability to sense the feelings and perspectives of other people. You feel very good about yourself and life in general when you put aside your opinions, biases, or preferences. Your satisfaction probably comes from figuring out why someone behaves, feels, or thinks differently than you do. It’s very likely that you are comfortable  sharing your viewpoints with individuals who ask you to do so. Their requests are proof that they like and trust you. You are less inclined, however, to make inquiries about other people’s judgments and/or conclusions. You probably avoid doing anything that could drive a wedge between you and your friends, acquaintances, family members, coworkers, teammates, or classmates. Driven by your talents, you urge, coax, and even demand that individuals do whatever it takes to reach their goals. When you step forward and exercise your authority, most people let you push and prod them toward excellence. Chances are good that you have no difficulty completing assignments by the date they are due. Deadlines probably motivate you to pace your work. You are sure to be a good partner for people who struggle to stay on schedule. You are likely to break down their projects into a list of daily tasks. With your assistance, these individuals are apt to surprise themselves and others by finishing on time. Because of your strengths, you derive much satisfaction from doing things that benefit people. You typically work as industriously on big projects as you do on everyday chores.” 

After reading the descriptions of the other four strengths, I was not very surprised. My favorite quote came to mind:

Completing this assessment and reading the results made me wonder what the strengths of my coworkers are, specifically those on my fifth grade team. It would be interesting to take the assessment as a school and consider how are are grouped as teachers.

This gift demonstrates the commitment that Bayer has to the development of its employees. Although I will only be employed for five weeks with them this summer, I will still be taking part in their Mindful Matters professional development program.

If this first meeting was any indication of the experience I will have this summer, it is already exceeding my expectations and I can’t wait to see what’s next.