Educating Elementary Students

I traveled to South Minneapolis to "Hit The City" with the Morris Area FFA Chapter on Wednesday for an Ag in the Classroom activity. The goal for the day was to educate elementary students in an urban area about food; where it comes from and how it is made. I arrived at our first of two schools, Northrop Urban Environmental Elementary, at around 10:00 AM. Jeff Knobloch, Region III President, had just arrived with with a trailer full of animals for the kids to see and learn about. I was excited to see one of my old friends, Esther Koehl, was there to present. She was beckoned inside to start while a couple guys set up the fence for the animals. I decided to venture inside and check out these presentations. In the classroom, students ranging from preschool to fifth grade learned about various topics. They had a chance to match each part of a hamburger with their raw ingredients; for example wheat would match up with the bun. In the picture above, Sami Searle, is presenting this portion of the curriculum and I even had the opportunity to help her out. (even more exciting to me was the smart boards that many of the classrooms had, as you can see in the picture it is a great way to teach!) The students also had a worksheet where they connected father, mother, and baby by drawing lines between them such as boar, sow, and piglet. They were even able to put a soybean and corn seed in moist cotton ball to see it germinate and grow in the coming days. In addition they received pig noses that they decorated (you can see them in some of the photos). As a part of the presentation, the kids had a chance to go outside and see some animals. There was a kid, a baby goat, a beef heifer, a five day old dairy bull calf, two adult sheep, and a rabbit. Near each animal was an FFA member to talk to the students about them. My new friend Taylor was nice enough to let me feed the calf (which completely made my day!!) for all the kids to see. After every student in Northrop Elementary had seen the animals and experienced the presentations it was time for lunch. We went into the gym and their principal, Kathy, thanked everyone for all the work they had put in for this event. Then about ten kids of varying ages came in and each one thanked us for what they appreciated most that day (SUPER cool!). For lunch, we were lucky enough to eat with the students! It was exciting to talk to them about their lunches and make a connection with everything they had learned that day. Finally, it was off to the second school, Wenonah Elementary, which turned out to be within a mile or two of the airport, which turned out to be a bit annoying for the FFA members working with the animals outside. They made it work though. By this point, they were giving the presentations for the third or fourth time and had it down pat. Before I knew it the day was over. I would like to thank everyone who helped put this event on and to the members of Morris FFA chapter for doing such a great job with these students. It was a fun day! I even got to catch up with some old friends like Jenna Moser, and Lauren Kill among several others. I also made some new friends including Tom, Jake, Kelly, Brooke, and Dylan. I hope to see more events like these in the future!

Kathy speaks to us in the gym.

One of the kids wore his Grandpa's FFA jacket!!

I hope everyone is getting excited for camps along with other summer FFA activities, because I definitely am! Hope to see some of you at graduation parties in the coming weeks as well!


Stationed by the door,

Justin J. Crowley