Who is Jimmy Lotspeich and why should you care?
Hello all my fellow classmates and anyone else with the inkling to read. I would like to tell you more about myself and why you might care to read this web log more in the future. To begin, this blog was created to fulfill one of the requirements of my Secondary Education course at Utah State University. In this course I will be writing blogs about my understanding of literacy and it's role in all aspects of education.
In order to understand some of my views and beliefs, I will let you into my head and history. I am the youngest child of three, and grew up on a ranch in the map dot of Deeth, Nevada. My mother was an elementary school teacher, vice principal and principal of the K-12 school where I received all my "schooling" prior to college. My dad was a Sheriff's Deputy and then served as the Sheriff of Elko County where I lived for 18 years. Both are retired from their first jobs and taking a turn as entrepreneurs.
My interests and hobbies are very closely ingrained to my agricultural lifestyle I live. I am interested in the outdoors and I love to go hiking in the mountains near my house (or any good mountains), camping, fishing (although I am not the greatest catcher), hunting and shooting. On top of my interests in anything that get's me outside, I am an avid reader of action/adventure fiction, love most sports that involve other people, get a kick out of Pinochle, and am an FFA fanatic. For those of you who do not know what FFA is, it is a youth leadership organization based on agricultural education. Middle school and high school students are able to become a member of the National FFA Organization when they enroll in a high school agriculture class and joining FFA was the best decision I believe I could have ever made in high school. The link to learn more about FFA is included here: FFA.
My high school agriculture teacher and FFA was also the reason I chose, after two years of avoiding the subject, to become an agriculture education major. I think that agriculture is the best method to learn about the world because almost everything that happens in our lives is connected to agriculture. Think about it; if you have eaten, worn clothing, lived or worked in a building, and used one of thousands of agricultural by-products, then you have been affected by agriculture. Agriculture is integrating science, math, history, art, into an incredibly diverse subject that has everything to do with our past, present and future.
Now, in our previous class I was able to come up with what I believe is a comprehensive definition of literacy. Literacy is the ability to understand, apply and critically reflect upon information. This relates to agricultural education because the majority of learning in "Ag ed" is based upon application of objectives. This type of skills-based learning has been proven to be very successful in many different courses but is used extensively in agricultural education and relies upon students having the ability to "read" in many different contexts.
