One of the core elements of farm to school is food and agriculture education, and a great way for teachers to expand their agricultural knowledge is through the Pennsylvania Educator’s Agriculture Institute, hosted by the Pennsylvania Friends of Agriculture Foundation.
From June 25-29 of this year, K-12 teachers spent the week in Centre County, where they attended educational tours at Penn State University and local family-run farms and learned valuable agricultural information to take home to their classrooms.
The week began with a visit from the Mifflin County 4-H members and their show animals, a tour of the 6th-generation Way Fruit Farm and a lesson on the Mobile Ag Lab, a 40-foot mobile classroom that travels across the state bringing an interactive field trip style experience directly to schools and students in grades K-8.
Teachers aboard the Mobile Ag Lab working on a science lesson.
Penn State Arboretum’s pollinator gardens.
Later in the week, folks learned about FFA and The National Grange, two organizations preparing members for leadership and careers in agriculture, as well as Dairy Leaders of Tomorrow, an organization preparing the next generation of dairy producers and professionals. The group took a walk in the woods to learn about PA forests and churned their very own butter at the Pasto Ag Museum.
The group learned all about dairy and poultry at Penn State’s Dairy Barns and Poultry Research Center and explored Penn State Arboretum’s beautiful pollinator gardens. Most days were not complete without a visit to the Berkey Creamery for ice cream!
A banquet was held at the end of the week to toast (a glass of PA milk) to the incredible speakers and farmers, the sponsors that made the week possible, and to the teachers doing inspirational agriculture education in their classrooms.
Learn more about the Educator’s Ag Institute and The Pennsylvania Friends of Agriculture Foundation, one of the organizations represented on the PA Farm to School Network’s Leadership Team.
Teachers participated in a forestry lesson at Penn State’s Ag Progress Days fields.