AEE 491: Seminar in Agricultural Education

The Agricultural and Human Sciences department features a semester blog called The Student Narrative. This blog will display assignments from courses offered within the department that are completed by students. For the Spring 2023 post, we have an assignment from the AEE 491: Seminar in Agricultural Education course, which the instructor, Mary Kate Lanier discusses.

AEE 491 is the student teaching seminar course for current student teachers, so students who are currently in their student teaching semester. We meet three times per semester for two full days. The focus of our March seminar was preparing for the job market. Preparing for your first interview can be daunting and we want our students to feel as comfortable as possible when they step into their first interview room. To best prepare our students for this experience, we hosted a resume/cover letter workshop. We edited examples as a group, discussed best practices, crafted our own resumes, and even drew out the best and worst interview outfits. We did all of this to prepare for the next day where students part participated in mock interviews. Seven administrators from local school systems came in for mock interviews with the student teachers and were able to interview them and provide feedback to our student teachers as they began to interview for real positions. The administrators included: 

• Chad Holloman: Senior Administrator for CTE, Wake County Schools
• Barbara Kirby: Professor Emeritus, NC State University
• Caroline Patterson: Curriculum and Instructional Management, Enloe High School
• Justin Wilkinson: CTE Director, Harnett County Schools
• Lindsey Hardee: School-to-Career Coordinator, Harnett County Schools
• Tara Drouhard: Principal, Sanderson High School
• Jo Anne Honeycutt: CTE Director, Wake County Schools

This seminar took place at the North Carolina Farm Bureau offices on Glenwood Avenue. Students were instructed to come in like this was a real interview, so to dress professionally, and bring necessary materials such as their teaching philosophy and their resume. Following the mock interview sessions, students and administrators enjoyed networking further over a catered lunch. Lisandra Mejia, one of the AEE 491 students commented, “The mock interviews allowed me the opportunity to get some real world experience as to what the next chapter of my career search is going to be like. Because of my experience in FFA I’ve had interview experience with the traditional questions, but the mock interviews opened my eyes to a whole new world of deeper questions related to education and why I want to teach, so I feel much better prepared for pursuing job openings after participating in these interviews.”