I'm Brian Myers. I'm Mike Ritalik. I'm Becky Hiread. And this is Al pellets a podcast featuring tips for ad teachers We are your agricultural education resource across the web sharing research based tips and tackling the tough questions facing agriculture teachers every day Hey Al pellets, this is Brian with Mike and Becky and we are here by the al pellet back once again for another exciting conversation And let me tell you something about excitement.
We have gathered what could possibly be the League of superheroes for all of agriculture education on this call We're all together. We're looking at teams and it is like a Brady bunch of the biggest hitters of ag ed right now What's a cluster of owls called it's a cluster for sure? We have we have we have a we have a cluster of ag ed scholars gathered here today Like you understand that at least a third of the people listening have no clue. We're pretty much is That will give them something to look up on the Google machines On the line on the line It'll be in the notes.
Yes, right. So we have got a crew here We have Becky Lauver Michael paid Dusty Perry and Scott Smalley on the call here. Thank you all for joining us here today on al pellets Excited to be here. It sounds like it This is gone from a podcast interview to a hostage situation Becky Becky Lauver get our introduce yourself and then we'll get a chance to have this great crew Provide an introduction to the al pellet audience for sure.
I'm Becky Lauver I am a professor in department head at Utah State University And I've been working with Michael pay for a long time on ag safety research and in the last couple of years five or six years We've added a couple more to our team and it's been absolutely wonderful to work with this group They are way smarter than I am but we have a great little study here on a multi-year Professional development with teachers in tractor machinery safety that we are excited to share with everybody. Yeah, I'm Michael Pete I'm a professor of access and technology I work for dr. Lauver My name is Scott Smalley I'm a teacher educator and I have enjoyed working with this group and look forward to talking with you today I'm Dusty Perry an associate professor in department head at Montana State University focusing on teacher prep and our cultural mechanics Well, very cool. Well, we are excited to learn from you all today You guys do some some outstanding work and are just generally great folks So Becky gave us a little bit of an overview of the topic for today But kind of give us a little more specifics about how our conversation is gonna go this afternoon for sure So for the last few years this team of Michael Scott Dustin and I have worked on a multi-year Professional development and tractor machinery safety for ag teachers in three different states and we've come together to develop these professional development workshops and curriculum And we're just excited to share what we've got so you guys have a long history here on doing some very important work in this topic And you guys are definitely the leaders in this but I saw this one here It was taken you're looking at a couple of different aspects of your professional development and what's effective to do those sort of things So what what was one of your big your big things here that you found about giving and leading professional development for teachers?
You know one aspect of what we're looking at for this continued professional development is what keeps teachers coming back You know each year a lot of times some of our states they probably see us a lot right? It's like a case the same guy the same gals from the university coming what's gonna keep bringing them bring them back Those are the questions we ask and it was not really surprising But one of the things was teachers wanted stuff right whether that was curriculum whether that was teaching tools kids They wanted something to bring back Especially if we start doing some of these extended professional developments like we did where you're looking at eight hours a day ten hours a day By the time you get done with that you're probably a little gas Maybe forget about some stuff and you really want to have a folder or resources something to come back And you want that to change and grow from a year year year And that's kind of what I've seen in at least our state level of this is trying to be created and what we offer them and making sure that What we offer them is useful for the day-to-day right when you get back to a classroom What can I bring to my students? Part of that creativity too I think was the fact that not only you're putting resources in people's hands But this was a kind of an extensive professional development of eight to ten hours So talk a little bit about the creativity that went into designing and delivering something that was that long? Yeah, so we've looked at a lot of different options to deliver this to a big number of teachers at each of these state level with like 30 to 40 teachers or more and say you have to figure out ways to Have an engaging enough and have enough hands-on experience and how to break that apart So one of the things that we did take away from this is when our last year is we kind of got where we were doing small modules with a lot of industry support whether it be donations of equipment or Getting connected with local producers or different schools We might have equipment for us to use with a hands-on aspect and breaking them out into smaller modules and give them to rotate through I really was I heard a lot of great feedback from teachers on that So if you're if you're leading a professional development one of the big takeaways was that how you incorporate active engagement in applying the content Because I think one of the takeaways from from a lot of professional learning is that can they implement it when they get back to the classroom?
That's what we open up to jump in terms of what Michael shared is that the activities were all really simple in terms of that They can transition back to the classroom and implement it very quickly within whether it was a small unit that they wanted to do it In that fall semester potentially or if it was something more extensive depending upon what their topics were within their classrooms This brings up certainly a topic that I think we struggle with particularly a professional development we think about Summer conference in any professional development and I guess I don't necessarily know when you delivered this but When we think about professional development over the summer how any strategies any thoughts around how do we get teachers to Retain that and then actually take it back into the classroom After a little bit of a lapse of time or activities in between there One of the things that we try to do is stay really close to our State office of education and through our listserv communicating consistently and keeping it out in front of them after they've attended our workshop So one of the things we were looking at doing as we did that is a piece of the of the grant project was a supervised ag experience Award on how we engage the teachers. Okay, here's the kind of the incentive. This is something we're gonna develop your students work-based readiness We're gonna be looking at the safety as a skill and how do we recognize students and so keeping it out in front of them? Hey beyond the lookout Here's the SAE safety award and we kept consistently engaging them on that message and here's some things that you should be implementing in the classroom and Saying out emails and communicating regularly and having that piece that allows us to apply it later on So they're looking forward to the academic year how they get their students engaged in that content as well The safety is a skill really caught me because I think about how often are we delivering professional development around here is the content This is the content you're gonna deliver But here the skills I'm gonna develop Can you talk a little bit more about kind of the the structure of the things that you're thinking about as you thought about you know Stepping back to think about really intentionally bringing safety and skill development over content delivery and how that kind of influenced How you thought about delivering professional development?
I think one of the things that the four of us decided early on in the project and Michael mentioned before was this active engagement And so it was developing the skill of the teacher So whether that was the teacher hopping on a tractor and backing and hitching to something or hopping on a flatbed trailer and Tying something down in the correct way and then evaluating each other on the process So they not only did they have the opportunity to practice the skill They got to talk to each other about the skills that they were learning those activities that we designed were really Intentional and critical to their skill development and the teachers walked through each one of those And building on that I don't know that something we just saw in the ones we did in Montana On the idea of building skills and having them like strap down equipment drive tractors What we saw a lot was people kind of self-group themselves in their own ability and it provided a safe environment So back to your question okay What could facilitators do is really consider that if you're doing something that skill base like this So for example, we had a group of folks who really didn't have a lot of experience on tractors and they kind of navigated towards themselves and Had that group so that Rotation looked a lot different than the ones that maybe spend most their summers hanging I got to jump in more advanced skill says and then got to go down to a more comfortable environment It was not as much experience It seemed like they asked more questions and thought more comfortable as the day went on I think that's goes back to the idea of like eight or ten hours You can really develop a mini community if you will really quick throughout the entirety of the day where you can jump into some deeper questions Build a sense of trust to where they feel like they can ask those questions Maybe that they haven't been so comfortable with in the past. Yeah, I think a lot of folks think of safety as you know the rubber room Protect everybody put a bubble around people but allowing people to experience within a controlled environment and understanding that safety is not just about Trying to make rules helping students understand or helping teachers understand that there's a lot of engineering that goes into that and understanding human factors I mean if we think about agriculture education, they want to see where the jobs are especially in safety We have engineers that are John Deere. They're specifically focused on preventing combine fires and or cotton harvester fires So there's there's some serious engineering aspects of that and how do you communicate that to your students? I think that's one of the aspects like when we think about reaction time and how human factors play an element in Operating equipment so we do we do different stuff in like the STEM activities that we'll look at you know Stability and then friction and things like that and rollovers and how that affects equipment design I think there's a lot of cool things that you could you can integrate as a skill within safety within the classroom Biggest things when we talk about the skill set in terms of safety Yes, we in teacher preparation programs and daily life We talk about safety, but we necessarily don't think about this from a different perspective Maybe outside of the classroom or outside of a laboratory setting is Michael shared and I think that's needs to be important for our teachers And on the forefront especially when we're starting to do more outside activities or in different parts of the country Obviously agriculture is different in terms of what we do in agriculture education And I think that's really critical even though this happened in the upper Midwest and area It's really important to make sure it's safety is in the forefront no matter what sector that we're looking at in terms of agriculture We talk oftentimes that there's a safety unit and everything that we're gonna be doing from there But so many times unfortunately I've seen teachers and probably even myself sometimes like alright folks We got to do the safety lessons so that we can go do the stuff or by gonna do this you know It's it's we're almost setting it up.
I don't say set up for failure, but we're not teaming it up very well So what's your what kind of coaching would you have for folks as you're trying to in first engage your students in a conversation around safety? Michael you talked about a little bit there about the idea not the rubber room kind of a deal But or the bubbles, but how else how else should we begin this conversation or when we're talking about our students? One of the things I like to do with my classes special laboratory is talking about equipment and what we want to do is communicate that it's not about Trying to forget you from doing something we want we want to start to establish that safety climate and that's saying You know I really care about you and I care about your future career And making sure that you have a long and lasting career whether it be working in industry around Aggrochemicals or if you're going to be doing sales or driving a truck I want you to have that career and I care about you I set teeing up I think more about that safety climate and this is why it's important because you're important and as a student I think that I think Becky you said this before like nobody cares how much you know It's just how much you care about I think of those people one of the things that Overload said to us one time as we were getting ready to teach is nobody got fired for not knowing enough But it's didn't know how to work with people so being able to set that up and really establish that You know this is this is about rapport with your students and understanding that big may come from families that are broken They may come from families that are hungry or you know They don't know where the next meal might come from or if they were struggling with abuse at home They're gonna they're gonna see this and they're gonna understand that you care and you're establishing that that climate That can hopefully carry them through a career And Brian and Mike you might remember these videos that I got to go Joe DC our tapes Yeah, it's a little bit more than that It's that developing that that rapport and that respect and the that carrying community within your classroom And that I think is easy for teachers to do that's an easy one and outside Look into what you said there Brian about safety kind of being a precursor to the stuff We're gonna do what we've seen over the last six years here is that safety kind of became the stuff If that makes sense safety was what we were doing throughout the activities It wasn't just a precursor to make sure that we can go hop in the tractor like it was the focus of it And that'd be something that's kind of a mindset change if you will you know take it back to your classroom But once you get to that point I started to really influence behavior from itself I Really want to go back to what dr. Bates said about just the the way you communicate the care safety I think we just had we had an episode or earlier in the season that was really about just all the ways You can kind of go beyond your job to care But like you are doing it in and day out when you are showing those kids how to use that equipment when you're developing that safety skill When you're just engaging with them to say like care about you enough to make sure you know We've here with not just leave here with 10 figures and 10 toes But I really actually developing in this area as a key piece of who you're becoming as a person I think that was her way Mike of telling us that she cares about you.
I mean that's about the nicest thing She's ever said you know it like in general like so good we regress So they do regress I spend a lot of time trying to get people on track around here So help me out here what recommendations do you all have for state staff? state associations when it comes to Professional development and even professional development within this area of developing a culture of safety I well I think the first thing that I want to share is that the one and done or the one-off workshops that We have all been a part of you take great notes You come home you intend to put something down and do something with it a lot of times it gets left in your book bag Or it gets shoved on your desk and it gets under a sack of paper thinking really hard about a theme that you can have continued and sustained Professional development over the course of a year or the course of a couple years I think is really critical into in creating change with with teacher and teachers knowledge So that's that's one thing that I think states should consider The other thing that just started dawned on me was we probably need in terms of safety We need to start asking our young and new teachers. How many of them have experience? Direct experience attractors and machinery because I think they are nervous to teach in the shop And to work with kids who have essays or they're working up with big machinery and equipment I think that is something to give some thought to because not only do they need to feel comfortable themselves But I got to feel comfortable with others around them that aren't feeling comfortable and the challenge that that really And how you feel going into those situations so it's a good observation And I think we would be surprised at the number of people that have little to no experience in machinery and tractors Hey, I still can't back a trailer so they tried to teach me it was terrible.
I thought you were a better teacher than that She backed it she did great So a lot of lives is like yeah, what are those I would say if you're going to attend the professional development What would be the long long-term lasting impact goal that you want you want to implement over the year? That one and done thing is that you go to it you get your credit and you leave But really think about it as a professional learning you are a professional How do I incorporate this and what's my goal for my students by attending this because ultimately that's your clients? That's who you're serving you're getting better to serve them to help lead make an impact in their community So if you think about long-term outside of yourself I think that would be a great thing to say where am I at where am I where I want to be and really be intentional about that? Well, I think that's a great way to kind of wrap this up and summarize this was that really and I hope we all think about this in the State leaders as well as we focus on the purpose of the professional development and Unfortunately, I think accidentally and unintentionally the purpose of some of this Professional development that happens is about how do I collect the hours for recertification or how do I we always have this?
And so how do I get everybody through here? I think the challenge for all of us listening is how do we go back to our state associations or state organizations and actually develop this Meaningful is focused on here's the topic we want to talk about and to do this topic well It's gonna take five hours to do it or it's gonna take ten hours to do it Or it's gonna take three hours whatever's gonna be and really focused on our desired outcomes and and provide that meaningful experience Which is gonna be hard because typically we always say well a teacher's conference has always been three days There's always been five days. There's always been whatever else and so how do we break out of that mold? To do that, but I think that's our challenge and you all have showed us Not only in the topic and the content of safety and how to really do this in a better way to access this But also given us something to be thinking about while we try to be more effective in the professional development we do that we leave So thank you all very much for spending time with us today here on Al pellets sharing your great work And I know you guys will keep we'll keep doing great.
Thanks. Thank you all very much We hope you've enjoyed this episode of Al pellets check out our website for more information on this topic and to learn more about our Guess follow us on Facebook Twitter and Instagram stay connected and be sure to subscribe to our podcast So you'll never miss an episode for Mike and Becky. This is Brian here by the Al pellets saying thank you And we look forward to seeing you again on another episode of alpels tips for ag teachers