Summer Ag Institutes Shaping Teachers' Views of Farmers

By Kay Shipman

Teachers form new views about farming after attending Summer Ag Institute. Several teachers plan to include lessons about agriculture in their teaching.

Teachers who attended the Illinois Farm Bureau's 2001 Summer Ag Institutes not only learned the origin of their food, they also gained new respect for farmers and farming, according to new survey results.

"Summer Ag Institutes are changing the attitudes of teacher graduates," said Kevin Daugherty, Illinois Farm Bureau education manager.

Ag in the Classroom across the nation offer summer institutes for teachers who want to learn how to connect classroom instruction to real world situations. Most summer institutes are one-week programs that expose teachers to today's food and fiber production system through field trips, presentations and hands-on learning. At least half of the state Farm Bureaus offer teacher training sessions.

IFB's Ag in the Classroom program surveyed about 340 teachers before and after one-week sessions. Of those surveyed, 68 percent did not have farm backgrounds. This year, more than 400 educators attended IFB's Summer Ag Institutes and eight universities and colleges were involved.

"You start to see some [opinions on] big issues, such as farmers' care for water [quality], that changed," Daugherty said. After the institute, 96 percent of the teachers surveyed said they believe farmers excel in taking care of water compared with 73 percent who thought that before the institute.

Institute participants also learned the reality of modern farming. Pre-institute, only 65 percent of the teachers thought of farms as corporations. That percentage increased to 91 percent after the institute.

In addition, roughly half the teachers thought farmers were computer literate before attending an institute. Afterward, 94 percent said the term "computer literate" described farmers.

Teacher opinions of farmers' environmental practices changed as much as any view. Before the institute, only half the teachers thought farmers were "non-polluters" and 70 percent thought of farmers as environmentalists. After the institute, 90 percent said farmers are non-polluters and 96 percent saw farmers as environmentalists.

The same trend could be seen in educators' views of pesticide use. Pre-institute, 76 percent said they thought farmers used chemicals properly, while 97 percent had that opinion after the institute.

The teachers surveyed said they planned to act on what they learned and share information with their students. About 60 percent said they planned to incorporate agriculture into classroom lessons each week, while another 21 percent indicated they planned to do so each day.

Eighty-five percent said they planned to teach about the importance of agriculture, compared to 38 percent before the institute. Eighty percent intend to teach about careers related to agriculture; about half planned to do so before attending an institute.

Depending on a state's institute, teachers may be able to earn graduate credits after completion, as in Illinois. Teachers often create their own lesson plans based on materials presented during the summer institutes. Many are surprised by the range of subjects in which information about agriculture can be incorporated, including science, math, language arts, social studies and others.

"It is vitally important that we show teachers how they can incorporate accurate information about today's agriculture into the school curriculum," said Laurie Wink, agricultural education director for the American Farm Bureau Foundation for Agriculture.

"The in-depth summer workshops allow teachers to discover connections between agriculture and the concepts they are trying to teach in science, math, geography, social studies and just about any other subject area," Wink said.

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