Bellwood- Antis SAE Visit #1

Hello all!

For those of you who do not know what a Supervised Agriculture Experience is, make sure you read this first paragraph and I will give you a quick overview. An SAE is a project that a student decides to do whether it is raise animals, start their own business, or in this case work at the local grocery store. Students then keep constant records about how much money they made, spent, and materials they used in their SAE book or keep records virtually on a site called AET. 

At my first visit we went to see a boy at the "Hometown Market" in Bellwood, PA on July 8, 2015 at about 1:30 p.m. to observe and ask questions about how his SAE was going. The students SAE type was a paid placement, meaning that the boy got paid for his job and hard work. I observed Mr. Webreck as he asked the boy  questions such as, "How has  your summer been going?", "what has the store had you do so far"? and other questions such the same. Whenever we found the manager of the store there were a few questions asked like, " Is (student) completing the job in a timely manner?", "Is he coming to work on time, and being respectful and attentive". Mr. Webreck was pleased, but certainly not surprised whenever the manager had nothing but great things to say about the students work ethic! 

It did not take me long to see the close relationship between the student and the teacher during this visit; and I quickly realized the importance of SAE and the major role that it plays in students lives. Keeping record books and giving the student a purpose to go to work is something that makes all of the hard work worth it for the teacher. I had the impression that students like whenever the teacher comes to visit them because it gives them something to be proud of and to demonstrate their hard work that they have been putting forth. 

Coming from an agricultural program that did not have FFA, this visit reassured me that in order to have a complete Ag. program, you must have all three components of the three circle model (shown below"! This was a real eye opener to me and I cannot wait to experience more SAE visits in the future! 

Mike