Just as I ask my students to continually learn and grow as learners and equestrians, I continue to be a lifelong learner. I believe that in order to grow you need to change, and keeping up with industry and education practices helps me be the best educator for my students . 

In this session, I shared my award-winning framework for helping students "show what they know" through professional digital portfolios. I demonstrated how students can move beyond the paper resume to document high-stakes equine and agricultural skills, providing a tangible evidence-of-mastery tool that bridges the gap between the classroom and the workforce. 

At the KACTE Summer Conference, I presented a framework for modernizing student assessment through digital portfolios. I demonstrated how educators can move beyond traditional paper resumes to create "living" websites where students document high-stakes technical skills. By focusing on evidence-of-mastery, this session provided teachers with a toolkit to help students celebrate their growth and present a professional, career-ready identity to the equine and agricultural industries. 

Long before winning state and national recognition, this session served as the initial launchpad for my digital portfolio framework. I shared the foundational philosophy that while paper resumes are essential, they are no longer enough for the digital age. I demonstrated how digital portfolios allow students to "work smarter, not harder" by documenting evidence of mastery and celebrating their growth over time through a real-world audience. 

This session explored the intersection of personal identity and academic achievement through the lens of digital portfolios. I guided educators through the process of helping students create "Learner Profiles" and "Passion Pages" that go beyond standard grades. By providing a platform for self-expression, this framework empowers students to curate a marketable personal brand while reflecting on their unique journey through the CTE pathway. 

I created a workshop about how to implement digital portfolios for the 2021 iCEV CTE Inspired Conference. I had so much fun and success with the project, I wanted to share with other educators how to do the same.  In a pre-recorded video, I covered the benefits of implementation, websites to use, how to implement, and showed a few examples. During the actual conference I attended a live Q&A where listeners could ask questions they had after my presentation. I hope that because of this video more educators will realize the power that a digital portfolio has to equip students to be successful. 

Following my selection as the 2022 "Ideas Unlimited" state winner, I was invited to present this session on integrating gaming into agricultural curriculum at the Kentucky Association of Career and Technical Education Summer Conference. I demonstrated how to utilize Minecraft to simulate complex systems—such as farm management and structural design—lowering cognitive barriers and increasing student investment through immersive, gamified learning. 

The National FFA Organization invited me to lead a PD session on how to implement Minecraft in agricultural education classes. They had seen a post I made on Facebook about the awesome pollinator gardens some students at Franklin County had made using Minecraft, and reached out to see if I would be interested. I of course said yes, and led a 30 minute session on the different ways you could use Minecraft along with resources that National FFA had compiled to make lesson planning easier. I also led a school PD at Locust Trace on using Minecraft, and added in how level 1 equine students had used Minecraft to build equine facilities.  

I attended the Thrive Conference hosted by the National Association of Agricultural Educators the winter of 2021. I attended a session led by Kirby Schmidt who talked about bandwidth. At first, I thought this was going to be about the struggle of virtual learning when students have different internet speeds. But, I quickly realized he was also talking about cognitive bandwidth, which I hadn't thought of before! I showed my administrators and media specialist a graphic Kirby used, and they asked if I would lead a best practices workshop about it. I put together some information that I had learned from Kirby, and then put it into a Pear Deck so the teachers in my building could brainstorm ways to lower not only the physical bandwidth needed to complete lessons, but also lower the cognitive bandwidth. 

Dr. Vincent at UK invited me to come teach a few hands-on lessons about horses in 2021. He was worried that due to the nature of online learning our future teachers hadn't grasped experiential learning. I brought our wonderful TAs (Cracker Jack & Max) to teach about grooming, brought our plastic horse, Larry, to practice bandaging, and set up a station about the differences in saddles.