Urban. Agriculture. Education.

FACT: Everyday I am faced with new adventures and meet outstanding people. This is just one of the many perks of my internship this summer. If you haven't read previous posts, I am currently working as an intern for the 4-H Extension Office. One of my major duties is to coordinate urban programing and conduct workshops for inner city summer programs. I have the opportunity to bring agriculture to the city and teach kids some pretty cool skills that they might otherwise never experience.


We, the other intern and myself, put together our workshops and go three times a week to three different locations and hold our workshops in the city. When starting this whole adventure, I will admit that I was a bit nervous. I wasn't sure how my students would respond to me or if they would even be interested in my activities. Well let me tell you there was no reason for me to be hesitant or nervous. As kids started walking into the building I was received with hugs and huge smiles. They were ecstatic to be there. I used this excitement to escalade the entire workshop with high positive energy. Because it was our first workshop, we spent some time getting to know each of them. Learning each of your students names is so important. Not only will you benefit from knowing your students names, but they will feel privileged that you care enough to learn a piece of personal information about them. Possibly one of my favorite and most effective pieces of advice that I received about education is to invest in your students. If you invest your time into your students they will invest their time into you. Love this!


I have most definitely seen this played out in in the urban programing that I am involved with. These students love relating their personal lives to the topics that I discuss during the lesson. I allow a lot of sharing. Probably more than I should; however, it's a safe environment where kids can share their opinions and have a voice without being judged for it. Not only do we strive to incorporate hands on activities in agriculture but we also work on developing leadership skills.


Yes, yes I have gone a bit off track here, but I felt the need to share some of these awesome things I have seen happening over the past few weeks! Now about what we are actually doing in these workshops. The program we are working with is for 6 weeks during the summer. In putting this program together, I did a bit of research and came across these really cool "Earth bracelets." The bracelets had different colored beads on them that each represented something different about our earth. For example, The blue bead represented the earth's water and then a short description about the water cycle was to be explained. After reading about this an idea popped into my head. What about agriculture bracelets? So for our first workshop we made bracelets and key chains with different colored beads that represented different aspect of agriculture and their importance.


Our beads represented the following topics:
Green: Plants
Brown: Soil
Blue: Water
Orange/Black: Day/Night/ Weather
Yellow: Sun
Purple: Animals
Clear: People!


We briefly described the importance of each and their direct influence in agriculture. I say briefly because for the next 5 weeks we are going to divide these topics and create a lesson for each of them. For example, the next week we did a lesson on plants and soil (green and brown bead) and this week we are working on our workshop about water (blue bead)! Each week the kids are suppose... suppose to.... return wearing their bracelets so that they remember what we learned about previously and what they have to look forward to in the upcoming weeks!


Nothing excites me more than sharing a bit of information about agriculture with these students and watching their eyes light up! Some of these topics they have never heard about and they are so engaged in learning these new ideas. Although they are not farmers or will never move outside of the city, agriculture is all around them. They just aren't always in tune with this realization. They are individuals that make an impact in society, and I want to encourage them to make decisions that will reap positive benefits. Every week I am encouraged to come back and make a positive difference in these students' lives. It's a refreshing atmosphere that reminds me why I aspire to become an Ag teacher!


       
 If you are interested in obtaining a copy of the lesson plan we developed for our agriculture bracelets feel free to shoot me a message!