COVID and the classroom: Getting the ag literacy message to students and teachers

DANVILLE, Ill. — Hopefully, by the time the butterflies in the Pollinator Kits hatch, students will be back in their classrooms to see them up close.

For now, Thea Gernand is enjoying the response of Vermilion County teachers to the new kits.

“We just got the word out about them and we are fully booked for our spring sessions and we are very excited about that,” said Gernand, the coordinator for the Vermilion County Ag in the Classroom program.

The Illinois Ag in the Classroom program provides lessons on agriculture and farming to students in grades kindergarten through eighth grade. The program is administered at the county level, and county Farm Bureaus have an AITC coordinator, who is responsible for putting the program together and getting the information out to schools in their county.

County coordinators are adapting their programs this year to a variety of classroom and learning situations. AgriNews talked to the people who are keeping ag in the classroom — wherever that classroom happens to be.

A Quick Turnaround

Kevin Daugherty isn’t just the education director at Illinois Farm Bureau. He is also the president of the Leroy CUSD #2 School Board. So, when the word went around that the governor was going to make an announcement on March 20 about COVID-19, Daugherty pretty much knew what was coming.

“Knowing the school board stuff, we were pretty sure the governor was going to make the announcement for the shutdown and that’s what he did,” Daugherty said.

Anticipating that some disruption to in-person classroom learning was coming, the Ag in the Classroom staff at Illinois Farm Bureau quickly pivoted.

“We made a video on Friday, and we said starting Tuesday, every day at noon until the end of the school year, we will provide a hands-on lesson and a STEM activity. We came up with new material that students and teachers could access with interest about what was going on in agriculture. We did something every day until June 12,” Daugherty said.

The goal was to provide content that was not just educational, but fun and stimulating, as well.

“We found some sort of fun video, whether it was the Peterson Brothers or something that went along with that topic or something goofy, just to try and have a little bit of fun, as well as learning about something,” Daugherty said.

The program’s Summer Ag Institutes, where teachers visit farms and agribusiness in their counties and learn about agriculture, went virtual by way of tours, conducted by the state’s grain and livestock commodity groups, along with one-hour training sessions for teachers.

All of the information was uploaded onto the program's blog site, beyondthebarndoor.wordpress.com, and also at the agintheclassroom.org website.

Continuing forward, Daugherty and his team are putting together monthly themes and the materials and activities to go along with those themes. With field trips canceled, he and his team are posting virtual field trips that teachers and students can enjoy.

The September virtual field trip was to an apple orchard and October will be a tour of a pumpkin farm.

“We are getting ready to go to Heap’s Giant Pumpkin Patch in Minooka,” Daugherty said.

The program also promotes a book that goes along with each month’s theme. “Pick a Pumpkin” by Patricia Toht, an Illinois author, is the featured book for October.

The state program continues to provide material weekly for teachers, posting the new lesson on Thursday for the next week. In addition, the state program also is offering professional development credits through a program called “PD in your PJs,” that offers Saturday morning sessions to earn those credits.

‘A Weird Year’

Rhodora Collins is looking at school this year not just as the DeKalb County Ag in the Classroom coordinator, but as the mom of a student who is doing remote learning.

The DeKalb County program serves students and teachers in 42 schools throughout the county. While Collins focuses her outreach at the elementary and middle school levels, she also works with high school ag teachers to provide materials and information.

Collins said the program is teacher focused, providing teachers with training and resources to incorporate agriculture into their classroom lessons.

“We do some classroom outreach, but we are not in classrooms every week as a lot of counties are,” Collins said.

When schools sent students home in March, Collins knew what other parents were going through, trying to keep kids occupied while also trying to adjust to the new normal of doing their own jobs from home.

“I’m at home as a parent, trying to keep my daughter occupied and seeing what her teacher is facing and what other parents are facing and thinking, ‘Is there anything I can do?’” she said.

So, she found activities that continue the ag learning and that families could do together.

“It wasn’t a lot, but I knew they were getting pummeled with stuff from all directions,” she said.

Moving into this school year, with field trips and in-person events canceled, she is working on finding ways to continue to get the ag message to the teachers and students in the county. She shares the lessons created by the state program and the national Ag in the Classroom program on the county’s AITC website.

“We had an ag literacy committee meeting recently. I have a wonderful blend of farmers and educators at different levels. I had questions for them, like what is the best way for me to assist teachers and promote ag literacy now? What is going to work and what is not going to work?” Collins said.

She was reminded of how much has changed when she glanced at a copy of the minutes of the March 10 ag literacy committee meeting. The committee discussed an awards night, the annual local history expo for DeKalb third-graders and an annual field trip for Sycamore eighth-grade students.

“I looked at those minutes and none of that happened. It’s just been a weird year,” she said.

Familiar Faces

However she can do it, Jennifer Glover is determined to get her Ag in the Classroom volunteer presenters back in front of students.

“We are trying to get them back with the familiar face that they are used to, who comes into their classroom. That was my goal, and they all jumped on board,” said Glover, coordinator for the Peoria County Ag in the Classroom program.

Recording lessons using Zoom instead of standing in front of students pushed Glover and her volunteers out of their comfort zone, but it was a move they made willingly.

“It’s pushed us all out of our comfort zones to do these recordings. All of my presenters from last year came back and said, yes, it was pushing them out of their comfort zones, but they know that building this connection and this relationship with our students is important,” Glover said.

The Peoria County AITC program serves some 250 classrooms in the county and 50 schools. Glover offers seven topics for teachers. Each topic has a 15- to 20-minute presentation and a hands-on activity.

This year, the seven topics remain, those were chosen earlier than usual, at the meeting of the AITC committee in February versus the usual May. But how the lessons are being delivered to students and classrooms has shifted.

Glover is still offering the in-person option and said a handful of schools have chosen that option and are allowing presenters into schools. A second option is a recorded Zoom lesson for students, and a third option is a virtual live meeting, where students can have a question-and-answer period with the presenter and can also see the hands-on activity.

While the response hasn’t been as robust yet as Glover hoped, she is encouraged that the numbers of teachers and students participating will continue to grow.

“It’s not as big as in the past, but we still are able to get the information out to all the teachers so they can share the information and we are doing our best to provide some other options,” she said.

In The Bag

When schools closed in March, Thea Gernand didn’t close up shop for the Vermilion County Ag in the Classroom. She kept the ag literacy messages going.

“I let the teachers get a handle on things. In the meantime, I was delivering ag mags to the school lunches and also in the packets that students took home. I was doing that through the end of the year,” said Gernand, who just started her second year as the county AITC coordinator.

Gernand’s Ag Bags, a bag containing the ag-themed lesson, lesson plan and all the materials that teachers and parents needed for the lesson, proved popular for the remainder of the 2019-2020 school year.

“I started to do our Ag Bag events in mid-April. Teachers and parents would give me a call and reserve however many they needed for their classroom or their student. Then I had the Ag Bags on a table at the front of our office and they could pick their Ag Bags up. We had four of those events. I know the teachers were still trying to figure things out, but good educational way to give the kids something to do at home,” Gernand said.

This year, Gernand has carried on with the Ag Bags. She introduced herself in a video that took the place of the open house she usually has in August for teachers.

Teachers can sign up for a virtual lesson with Gernand appearing virtually in the classroom via SMARTBoard or, for remote learners, Gernand joining their classroom in a remote session or they can sign up to have a link to a YouTube video of the lesson. All of the options come with the Ag Bags, which Gernand is delivering.

The Ag Bags have been popular with teachers and so far, the YouTube video option has received the largest number of requests as teachers juggle multiple classrooms.

“The teachers like it because they don’t have to prep and everything is right there for them,” Gernand said.

While some schools and students have had issues with connectivity, Gernand said everyone is learning to work with technology that may be unfamiliar.

“It’s new for the teachers. It’s the first time doing this. We are working together and solving technical issues. It’s a learning curve for everyone, but it’s a good one because it’s going to have us grow and that’s a good thing,” she said.