Visiting Pequea Valley

The Mechanics shop.

 On Friday, February 3rd, I had the lovely opportunity to visit Pequea Valley for the entire school day and observe how they run their agriculture program, what agriculture courses they teach, and compare differences in how different Agriculture programs run their courses and use their facilities.  My first initial observation of the program was how they made great use of a relatively smaller space compared to the space at Penn Manor.  Despite having smaller rooms/space overall, the shop, welding booths, small animal and aquatics section, and classrooms were fully equipped with awesome supplies, animals, and cool class materials and facilities.  Every section of the facility was used in some way on the day that I visited and I was very happy to see that.  

The turtle at Pequea Valley.

I was excited to see how they kept mice, rabbits, fish, and a turtle all indoors out in their shop space.  These animals were utilized and interacted with in the vet science courses that I observed and that was really neat to see.  Additionally, Mrs. Vansant brought in her own two dogs and the students got to practice animal restraints.  Although Penn Manor does not keep or house any animals, the animal science and vet science courses still get to experience a lot of hands-on activities by bringing in animal reproductive and GI tracts, completing projects using real wool, and using sensory bins and physical models to represent animal diseases and artificial insemination.  It was super neat to see the different ways that Penn Manor and Pequea Valley implemented hands-on activities in different ways in the area of vet science.

Mrs. Vansant's dog.

Another thing that I observed was the agriculture mechanics class.  I observed them learning about plumbing parts and tools.  During the class, Ms. Mathias used physical examples of the tools and parts and also went over the answers/reviewed the activity on a ppt after they were able to see and experience the actual physical tools and supplies.  Penn Manor also teaches plumbing and students typically learn about parts and tools as well.  

When comparing the classes overall, Pequea Valley's agricultural content seems to be pretty heavy on animal science and vet science.  Penn Manor has animal science and vet science classes as well, but the overall course content at Penn Manor is more heavily focused on Agriculture Mechanics.  Another key difference that I observed was that Pequea Valley runs on period scheduling while Penn Manor runs on block scheduling.  For Pequea Valley, period scheduling allows for more separate courses to be taught in an Ag program with fewer teachers, but since the periods are shorter, less activities and content can be covered in one class session.  This is compared to block scheduling at Penn Manor with 5 Ag teacher compared to 2.  So, while there can only be 4 class sessions in a day with block scheduling, having 5 ag teachers allows for more agriculture courses to be taught.

One of the adult mice at the school.

So, in observing both Penn Manor as I have been teaching and Pequea Valley on the day that I visited, I was super excited and delighted to see how each of the programs were similar and how they differed in facilities and resources, course content, teaching style, and general management.  I had a blast talking with other Ag teachers in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, meeting up with Ms. Mathias from my #PSUAgEd23 cohort, and interacting the adorable animals. 

One of the rabbits students can interact with at Pequea Valley.