Tag: Planning

Day 9: Keep Calm and Plan On

Kaitlin LiszkaAgriculture

Today we spent the morning hard at work putting the finishing touches on our lesson plans for our second teaching episode, Ag Day, which will occur during our FELDA visit. We also created our third (and final) grouping of instructionals teams for our third teaching episode in Malaysia. Creating and working with unique instructional teams each time allows for us to learn and engage with different teaching styles. Each instructional team is composed of a U.S. secondary agricultural teacher; a U.S. pre-service agricultural teacher candidate and a U.T.M. pre-service agricultural teacher candidate. Our third lesson will be taught at a Vocational College, and each team will get to teach on a different topic.

A Vocational College in Malaysia is a little different from what we would envision in the United States. It is comprised of students aged 15 to 18. Students in Malaysia take a one to two week exam when they are in Form 3 (about age 15), and their score determines the options they have to finish their education. There are three main choices that students have based upon their scores; go to what we would consider a boarding school or elite university preparation academy, attend a Vocational College, or continue in a National Secondary School (SMK). The digging that we did during our lesson planning session has me super excited to see what their facilities include. I know that their food processing facilities look very intriguing! (Check out their Facebook page here)

 

To wrap up our morning of planning, we did a partial working lunch of SPAGHETTI! Dr. Melanie, Dr. Husna, and the other faculty have been hard at work for this whole experience to try to accommodate all the participants, and to the joy of the American participants somehow got us almost American-like spaghetti. The UTM students were a little less thrilled, as they were missing their staple of rice in our meal again. After lunch, we had a quick orientation to staying with host families because tomorrow we will begin our travels to FELDA to see another aspect of Malaysian culture and education!

In the afternoon, we traveled to another part of UTM’s campus to see the Institute of Bioproduct Development (@ibdutm). Not only did we learn how they uses herbs to support the nations wellness industry, we learned from the director about his experiences that demonstrated the need for understanding other cultures to better your lifestyle and the importance of truly immersing yourself in the culture so that you can learn the most about it. I also found interesting the idea he brought up of taking probiotic supplements when you take antibiotics to replenish the good microbes in your body because antibiotics kill all the microbes, good and bad. We also learned that some put probiotics in animals feed to help prevent them from becoming sick as opposed to using antibiotics to treat illness.

 

During the tour, we got to smell some of the products that they produce in the Herbal/ Phytochemical Processing part of the facility.

 

I think the real fun fact that we all learned today though, is that the reason your coffee creamer is flammable. It’s because of the lactose in it! So I guess don’t try to put out a fire by dumping your milk on it…

Ms. Kaitlin Liszka (@KaitlinLiska) is a pre-service agricultural education candidate (#psuaged21) at The Pennsylvania State University (@TeachAgPSU).

Landed: Let the adventure of learning commence!

Daniel Douglas FosterIn-Country Sharing

After 4 years of focused effort and borrowing a popular phrase from one of my childhood favorite shows, The A-Team, with Colonel John “Hannibal” Smith, I LOVE IT SEEING A PLAN COME TOGETHER!

We are so thankful to have the support of the USDE Fulbright-Hayes to be able to offer this specialized transformative learning immersion for agricultural teacher candidates and agriculture teachers from Indiana, Iowa, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and of course Malaysia.

Most people do not realize the tireless effort and planning that was required to reach this the point!  An experience like this does not just happen by jumping on an airplane. In 2014 (in-route to #AgEd2Korea), Melanie Miller Foster (@GlobalMelanie) complete the scoping trip to Malaysia that helped solidify the grant application submitted in Fall 2014. The application was rejected at that time, but great feedback was given! In 2016, we resubmitted and were awarded to conduct the experience in Summer 2018.

As soon as we learned of acceptance in early 2017, work began with the Global Teach Ag! Consortium from the learning design team of the Penn State Global Teach Ag! Initiative (@GlobalTeachAg) and Hawkeye Community College Global Agriculture Learning Center (@GALC_Hawkeye) to the host team of the University Technology Malaysia, (@UTMeduc) much much work has been done.

Because of all that work (and after 2.5 days of traveling with 20+ flying hours traversing nearly 10,000), this great photo of 30 passionate, positive agents of change for food, fiber, and natural resources through youth agriculture development is possible!

This is a learning journey we are super excited to share with you. We really hope that we can be ambassadors for goodwill through agricultural education. To do this, we believe open conversations are critical. We strongly encourage you to subscribe to the blog, feel confident in posting comments/questions on anything we share, and maybe (just maybe) even engage with us on Twitter at #AgEd2Malaysia!