What I seek in a cooperating center

The past weeks my classmates and I have been on the search for our cooperating centers. This personally has been a little overwhelming, especially with so many wonderful programs throughout the state. For me, I tried to limit my search via specific things I was looking for in a program. In all honesty I'm generally an easy going person and don't have too many "musts" in my search for a school. Regardless, below are some things that are important to me in a student teaching location...

• Strong FFA program 
• The most important thing for me is finding a program with a very strong FFA program. Coming from a non FFA background, I think that my time student teaching could best be spend developing this     knowledge and understanding. Being actively involved in a program with this strong focus will ultimately help me understand how things work on the educator end of things.
• Female Teacher
• Another important thing for me is to find a female teacher. While I am not opposed to having a male cooperating teacher, I think I would learn the most from a female. Students often have different expectations for their male versus female teachers. As I learned in my student phycology class, there is often an expectation for female teachers to be nurturing and "motherly" whereas male teachers are expected to be more strict with students. Ultimately, I would feel more comfortable with a female teacher because it would give me some indication as to how I would be treated as a female educator. 
• Strong Community Aspect
• Another thing that is really important to me in an ag program is community involvement. I would love to one day teach in a program where the community places great value on the program and is actively involved with events and the students. Student teaching at a school with these qualities is important to me because I think it will give me better indication as to how I could model a program to have that type of involvement. Bottom line, I think an ag program is only as good as the community that supports it so I would like to learn more about how the community might be involved.
• Plant and Animal focused content
• While I am open to programs with other content focuses, I think I would benefit most from a plant and animal focus. I have a relatively good background for both subjects and would feel much more comfortable teaching something I already have an okay understanding of. Essentially, I think I would benefit from focusing more on how to teach than what to teach.

While it can be extremely daunting, I'm trying to just trust the process. I have faith that my teachers and I will be able to work together to find a program that can help me learn and grow into the educator I hope to be. 

Thanks for reading!

-Nell Barbour