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Society-Ready Graduates
Agricultural Literacy Programs for Teachers K-12
Impact Nugget
The 29 participants in the 2004 Summer Agricultural Institute for Teachers
are currently teaching 2784 students, and say they would teach an average
of 13 more years, with a potential impact of reaching 37,000 students
for agricultural literacy instruction.
Issue
The earth's human population topped six billion in the year 2000. All
those people depend on agriculture to provide them with food, clothing,
and a variety of other products to enhance their lives. As more homes
are built on prime farmland across the U.S., a smaller number of farms
are providing for the basic needs of many more people. Less than two
percent of the U.S. population is engaged in production agriculture.
There aren't enough sons and daughters of current farm families available
to carry on this essential industry. To interest K-12 students in finding
out more about where their food comes from, and how they can pursue
various careers in agriculture, agricultural literacy programs have
been launched nationwide. Teachers need to understand agriculture themselves
before they can integrate concepts about agriculture into their lesson
plans.
What has been done?
The University of Arizona Cooperative Extension, with funding from the
Arizona Foundation for Agricultural Literacy, has conducted a five-day
Summer Agricultural Institute for Teachers every summer for 14 years.
The Institute educates participants about the Arizona agricultural industry
and encourages them to incorporate this knowledge into their classroom
activities. The Institute combines hands-on learning about agriculture
with practical curriculum development. Participants receive lesson plans,
videos, and other take-home materials. Eighty-three volunteers contributed
600 hours of service in 2004 to ensure the success of the Institute.
Many of the teachers have little or no knowledge of the agriculture
industry. They visit agricultural operations, stay with farm families
and interact with the owners and managers of these businesses, to better
understand the technical aspects of agriculture in Arizona, and the
wide range of agricultural operations and career opportunities.
"Project Food, Land & People Resources for Learning"
is another opportunity to extend the agricultural literacy message into
schools. Teachers participate in six-hour workshops and receive 55 lessons
that incorporate agriculture into any subject they teach. These nationally
designed lessons have been aligned with Arizona's Academic Standards,
and have been recognized as outstanding by the Arizona Department of
Commerce.
Joint workshops with other educational providers is the third opportunity
for teachers to learn how to incorporate agriculture into their classroom
curriculum. Teacher participants in these workshops receive an intensive
two-day training, where they are given the curricula of Project Food,
Land & People, Project Learning Tree and Project WET (Water Education
for Teachers). All three of these curricula are delivered by employees
of the University of Arizona.
In addition, 30 Arizona Specialty Crop Lessons were written by 16 teachers
and published in 1100 notebooks that are provided to teachers participating
in workshops and the SAI. The lessons were published through a $33,000
grant provided by the Arizona Department of Agriculture and are the
first lessons to focus specifically on Arizona agriculture. They have
been aligned to Arizona’s Academic Standards.
Impact
From 1990-2004 a total of 319 educators have attended the Summer Agricultural
Institute. Seventeen percent have earned graduate level credit through
the UA for completing the Institute program. The 29 participants in
the 2004 Institute are currently teaching 2784 students, and say they
would teach an average of 13 more years. Thus the potential impact from
these 29 teachers would be their contact with almost 37,000 students
for agricultural literacy lessons over the next 13 years.
As for Project Food, Land and People, 1,000 teachers have participated
in this program. Assuming an average of 30 students per class for these
teachers, 30,000 students are learning about agriculture during the
2004-2005 school year.
Results of a four-state study (Arizona, Montana, Oklahoma and Utah)
conducted with about 2,000 kindergarten-6th grade students, through
the national Agriculture in the Classroom (AITC) program in 2002, showed
that across all grade levels, students who were taught by AITC-trained
teachers demonstrated more knowledge about agriculture compared to students
in classrooms with teachers who had no AITC training.
Funding
Arizona Foundation for Agricultural Literacy
Arizona Tech Prep
Arizona Department of Agriculture
Arizona Foundation for Resource Education
Western Growers Association
Contact
Monica Pastor, program coordinator, agricultural literacy
Maricopa County Cooperative Extension
The University of Arizona, 4341 E. Broadway, Phoenix, AZ 85040
Tel: (602) 470-8086 ext. 317, FAX: (602) 470-8092
Email: mpastor@ag.arizona.edu
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