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Kentucky ag teacher adds history to his course work

By TIM THORNBERRY
Kentucky Correspondent

FRANKFORT, Ky. — While agriculture has figured prominently in U.S. history, a new venture by a high school ag teacher and his FFA students plans to take the subject to new heights through a multi-level initiative.
J.R. Zinner is one of the two agriculture education teachers at Western Hills High School and has long incorporated mainstream subjects into his agriculture curriculum including math, science and biology.
Zinner now has the idea of bringing history into the mix by way of a cooperative effort that will not only lead to, what he believes, is the first vocational-agriculture history class, but will involve the collection and restoration of vintage farm tractors and implements.
Development of the project will include the creation of documented accounts of historic perspectives from local farmers and a new avenue for FFA students to participate in their Supervised Agricul-tural Experience (SAE) program.
The SAE is a requirement for all ag students that creates an out-of-school project teaching them to keep records and build employable skills while allowing them to apply what they have learned in the classroom into a real-life experience.
“Since there are less actual farms and fewer students that are coming from rural areas, their SAE is not based on traditional farming. We were hoping to team up with an agency like the Kentucky Historical Society and find some grant options for technology and let students do their SAE in ag communications,” said Zinner.
“They would go out and interview farmers so that we can get stories and perspectives documented before they pass away.
“Farmers statistically are 57 years old and older and we’re losing that information every day as they move on, so we want to be able to document that because we don’t know if that’s being done enough across the nation. They always have the most amazing stories dealing with livestock, watching their crops grow and knowing the historical accounts of weather patterns; they just know so much.”
Zinner also said that another component of the project would bring history and agriculture curriculums together creating a new program to benefit students.
“Many know that Kentucky classes already honor articulated classes such as food science and agri-biology, but we are hoping to create a curriculum that can count for social studies credit state-wide by developing a class that is aligned with U.S. History core content,” he said.
The core content Zinner referred to is what the state Department of Education identifies as the essential components within a program’s curriculum that all students should know and that will be included on the state assessment.
In Kentucky that assessment is known as CATS (Commonwealth Accountability Testing System) which includes Kentucky Core Content Test, writing portfolios and prompts, alternate assessments for students with severe to profound disabilities, the ACT, PLAN (an education assessment usually taken in the 10th grade to prepare a student for the ACT) and non-academic components.
Zinner’s ag mechanics class figures into the mix, too, as students are taking vintage tractors and implements and restoring them not only for their use but possibly to loan out for everyone to learn from and see.
“We want to start on a letter series of Farmall tractors especially because they have such a pertinent place in the hearts of many bluegrass burley producers,” said Zinner.
“With these tractors, our ag-mechanics class is going to try and create a restored collection that can be loaned to both state and national historic societies that want to showcase agriculture’s importance to our nation.”
Western Hills’ new FFA president Beth Engler, is one of Zinner’s students that has come from a non-farming background going on to become a leader in FFA.
“History about agriculture and about farming has always been an interest for me. We’ve learned a lot by learning about the history of FFA and it’s important to know where we’ve come from and how everything got started,” she said.
Another ag student, Ron Lewis, grew up on a farm and said the program could be helpful in his regular classroom studies.
“I think this could lend a hand to my Social Studies. It is a lot easier for me to study through agriculture because I’m more into ag,” he said.
Zinner said many students learn better through applied technology coupled with academic studies.
“We can always learn from a book, but I know what we learn hands on and visually will stick with us for life. So if we can make an influence on students to understand the history of Kentucky and local agriculture, then I think we can help these students realize the importance of preserving historical data and historical equipment and maybe even create a love they might possess the rest of their life,” he said.
Zinner hopes a relationship between state agencies like the historical society or even the Kentucky Agriculture Heritage Center, which is in the development stage, could help get the program going.
He would also welcome donations of tractors from anyone in the area. Anyone interested in contacting him can call at 1-502-803-0414 or write to him; John R. Zinner at Western Hills High School, 100 Doctors Dive, Frankfort, Ky. 40601.

5/14/2008