Faculty create collaborative professional development training for agriculture educators
Paula Mellom and her team in the Center for Latino Achievement and Success in Education (CLASE) helped agriculture educators connect to their subject areas and enhance students’ problem-solving skills during a two-day professional development (PD) training session.
In collaboration with James Anderson, an associate professor in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, Mellom—who serves as interim director of CLASE—helped develop and deliver a training session for 17 agricultural education and science teachers from the Chicago High School for Agricultural Sciences and the Harold S. Vincent High School in Milwaukee.
By implementing culturally responsive pedagogy into their lesson plans, teachers prepared by the project can identify students’ unique cultural strengths and promote academic achievement and career attainment in the classroom. This student-centered approach calls for more interactive and conversation-based learning—which is where Mellom and her team come in. Along with Jodi Weber, associate director of professional development of CLASE, and Rebecca Hixon, associate director of program development and research of CLASE, Mellom conducted two days of professional development training using a variety of online tools including Zoom, Padlet, and Google Docs.
“What I love about our work is that this is not something extra teachers just do for 30 minutes at the end of the day, as a special way for students to get in touch with their feelings and get to know each other,” said Weber. “This is how you teach math. This is how you teach every content area that kids are engaged in. And that is how this pedagogy goes beyond the classroom and into everyday life.”