Life Lessons by Meghan

Life Lessons by Meghan - October 2016 Scholarship Essay

According to a survey conducted by Indiana University called the High School Survey of Student Engagement in 2007, less than two percent of students were never bored while in school. I believe that this phenomenon is due to the learning style. Learning from books is much more boring than learning hands-on. If the roles were reversed, I would be an agriscience teacher. In fact, I wish to go to college to become an agricultural educator because I enjoy the hands-on, real life experience that can be gained from being in an agriculture class.
I still remember my first hands-on lesson in my animal science class. We had learned the external anatomy of a milk cow from the boring textbook, then my agricultural teacher brought in a cow for a quiz. Red and orange calk covered the cow with different numbers that we would use to identify the different anatomical features. Afterwards our teacher told us about the young cow. In that one lesson I learned more than I had from a book lesson. My main reason for wanting to be an agricultural teacher is to teach in a hands-on style that helps to get the students engaged in the learning.
“Not likely,” replied my high school chemistry teacher after I had asked him if we would ever use the material in real life. However, agriculture is one of the subjects where the material could be applicable to life. Agriculture is everywhere. From clothes to science, agriculture can have a large factor in how people live their lives. As an agriscience teacher I would have the opportunity to teach the students about things that exist everyday in the world.
Regardless of the occasional boring book lessons that take place in any agricultural class, the hands-on and real life applicable information has made it my dream to enter the agricultural education career. I have witnessed students, who I hadn’t expected to, get involved in the lessons because of the material being presented in a different style that is much more interesting. Instead of trying to cram information into the students’ brains, agricultural educators use the hands-on lessons to re-enforce the previous book lessons. That makes my decision to want to become an agriscience teacher easy.