Welcome to my professional blog! I am so excited to be within a year of starting my student teaching experience. There is a lot of work to do between now and then, so, I will just start off with an introduction.
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| Grand Champion Steer- First year in 4-H |
I grew up in a little town called Enon Valley in Western Pennsylvania. When I say western, I am talking about a mile and a half from Ohio. I did not start out my life living on a farm, but after the passing of my uncle when I was 7, my father took over the farm he grew up on and my family has lived there ever since. My parents, Ed and Peggy and my brothers, Chris and Shane have always been huge supporters of me and everything that I do. My Father was also a member of 4-H and Mohawk FFA as well as my younger brother Shane. My older brother, Chris, was a member of Blackhawk FFA. The farm, started in the 1860's, called Clark's Dairy Farm, milked Jerseys until the 1990's when the cows were sold and it was converted into a beef farm. When I was 8, I joined 4-H and started my livestock showing career. My first year in 4-H, I had 2 Market Steer projects and a Beef Breeding project. This really started my passion for agriculture and the banner at the end of fair week only made that passion burn brighter.
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| Natural Gas Conversion FFA Demonstration |
By the time that I was in junior high school, at Mohawk Area School District, I had also added Market Hogs to my showing lineup. I also now had the opportunity to join FFA. FFA really shaped me into the person that I am today. It showed me that there was much more to agriculture then cleaning out the barn and getting banners. I started to become interested in the technology that was upcoming in the field of agriculture. I joined my FFA chapter's demonstration team because of the team's ideas to demonstrate new technology that would be used in agriculture. My first year on the team we converted a small gas engine to run on natural gas. It was a technology that had been used on indoor equipment like floor buffers, forklifts and even Zambonis at ice rinks but had just started moving into the agricultural field with larger farm equipment due to the increase in natural gas drilling. We ended up placing first that year at Mid-Winter convention with that demonstration. A demonstration that I would later work on would be with drones and their ability to work with GPS systems on ag farm equipment to aid in precision agriculture.
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Receiving my Star award. Peep my cohort
members Justin and Nate!
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As I started to wind down my high school agriculture career, I applied for my Keystone degree and also applied for the State Star Farmer award, an accomplishment that my father was awarded when he was in FFA. I went to the Western Region judging for the star applicants and I was chosen to represent the Western Region at Mid Winter Convention. I went through the interview process down there and got the amazing honor of State Star Farmer and the opportunity to attend the Big E and represent Pennsylvania. At the same time as these accomplishments were happening in my life, I was receiving my acceptance letter to come to Penn State. I then finished out my year as President of Mohawk FFA and graduated from high school.
I started my college career at Penn State Beaver, coming in as an Agricultural Sciences major not knowing exactly what I wanted to do. I quickly realized that teaching would be a good route for me, with all that FFA did for me through high school and the passion that I had for FFA. I added Education Theory and Practice to my first semester schedule and have not looked back since then. I am so happy to be in the major that I am, with amazing cohort members and faculty in the Agricultural and Extension Education department.
I am both excited and nervous for the next year and the work that will be accomplished during that time. I hope to learn from my professors and my cohort members to give me a foundation to be the best educator that I can be.
-Dylan
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