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The Hunt for the Perfect Cooperating Center

The Hunt for the Perfect Cooperating Center!
Looking for the perfect school to student teach at is hard! With so many cooperating centers to pick from, the process of narrowing it down to the top three was stressful and exciting at the same time. I am determined to find my perfect fit for student teaching during the spring of 2021

I would love to be at a cooperative center with an active FFA program. I love FFA and have had so many great memories competing with my sisters, brother, and friends. FFA is very important to me and I would love to help with a program at a school. When I was in FFA, I competed in many events like Parliamentary Procedure, wildlife, and land evaluation. I really want to find a cooperative center with an FFA program that competes in various CDE events at the regional and state level so that I can learn more about coaching and preparing students to compete. I would love to be at a cooperative center that has CDE events that I am not familiar with so I can expand my knowledge of FFA.

When deciding whether I want a one or two-teaching cooperative center, I will not be very picky. I come from a one-teacher program and loved my experience with it. I have been looking at cooperative centers with both one and two-teacher programs, and overall, that has not been a deciding factor on whether I wanted to visit the school or not. I think it would be exciting to go somewhere like that to experience what it would be like to work with another teacher since I do come from the one-teacher program, but I definitely will not use this as an ultimatum for if I will consider a cooperative center or not.

As for classes, I hope to find a balance of subjects I might struggle with and subjects that I feel more comfortable with. I feel very comfortable with introduction to agricultural classes, like Ag 1 and Ag 2, intro-level agribusiness management and animal sciences, as well as introduction and advance FFA leadership classes. I feel semi-comfortable with landscape and plant sciences, however, it would still be a challenge for me. Subjects that I am not completely familiar with or that I would feel more uncomfortable teaching would be agricultural mechanics classes, including welding and small gas engines, and more 
advance classes of animal, plant, and food sciences.

Overall, I am looking for a cooperative center that can bring my experience, knowledge, and opportunities for growth. I want to go to a school on a visit and get that feeling that I know it is the one for me. Not only do I want to cooperative center to be beneficial for me, but I also want to be an asset for the cooperative center as well.

I am very excited with the schools that I have visited so far and to continue process of selecting my cooperative center for the spring of '21! The hunt for a cooperative center will be over soon!!

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