08/16/06 Ag in the Classroom

Ag in the classroom. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture. Agriculture in the Classroom is an educational program created in 1981 to promote agricultural literacy among the nation's students. Linda Davis - a State Volunteer for Tennessee - explains how the program educates teachers and students. DAVIS: We started a few years back bringing teachers into university workshops and we continue to do that. We started out with one or two universities, now we're in 10 across the state. And they come in for a day of in-service training and at the end of that day they go home with a tote full of resource material and they go back to their classrooms and hopefully those teachers; and most of them do, become Ag ambassadors. And they are the liaison between the county and the state office and the schools getting the resource materials that they need. The program encourages students to explore the critical role the U.S. agricultural system plays in their lives by incorporating agriculture into the regular teaching curriculum. Davis says Ag in the Classroom gives students the opportunity to use fun exercises with an agricultural twist to learn all their basic subjects. DAVIS: We have resource materials that will fit into every subject matter that they teach. It's not our intent to be teaching agriculture as another subject. It's incorporated; math, science, arts, history the whole nine yards. And they have some of the neatest hands on experiences that teachers can use. It can be a months worth of procedural hands on experience, what have you that they can do as much as they want to use it. It benefits the teacher and it benefits the student. By integrating agriculture into teaching and learning - Davis says the hope is to ensure that our nation remains aware of the importance of the Ag industry. She says the program's goals are important - noting that Ag in the Classroom is needed now more than ever. DAVIS: We feel that it is important for the teachers to have an understanding of the basics of agriculture to pass on to the children. And as our society gets further removed from production agriculture, even the teachers are getting further removed from understanding it and obviously if our children don't have an understanding of agriculture we are going to be in real trouble down the road because we are so few our voice is not very loud unless we stick together and pass the word that everyone of us east every day and we all have a stake in this production agriculture. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.