COLUMBUS, Ohio – Twenty-four Ohio teachers benefited from summer school this year, thanks to the Ohio Farm Bureau. Ohio County Farm Bureaus provides ag programming for students throughout the year, but this program was specifically designed for teachers.

Food Roots: Where Your Lunch Begins was a one-day professional development event focused on connecting educators to the roots of the foods their students eat. The event took place in Kasich Hall during the Ohio State Fair.

Presenters, visits to the animal barns, and Q&A sessions with farmers provided teachers with new ways to incorporate agriculture instruction into their classrooms.

Mary Klopfenstein, ExploreAg and ag literacy program specialist for Ohio Farm Bureau, was happy with the level of participation at the inaugural event. “This is the first educator professional development that we have hosted,” she said, “We ended up with 24 kindergarten through 2nd grade educators from across the state.”

Klopfensein explained why the professional development was specifically geared to early grade levels.

“We used K through 2nd grade because the lessons we found were tailored for those grades,” she said. “Instead of having K through 6th grade all in the same room, where we would have needed a wider range of resources to be really relevant, we want to make sure we could be as relevant as possible for the group that we bought in.”

After hearing a presentation about how to incorporate agriculture into the classroom, Vinton County Schools’ second-grade teacher Robyn Hambrick, who teaches in a small southeast Ohio school district, came away from the professional development with a new perspective.

“I thought it would be good, especially in rural southern Ohio, where there’s farming, but it’s taken for granted,” Hambrick said. “My kids don’t realize where their food really comes from, because they know it comes from Walmart.”

After introductions, teachers heard a presentation on Connecting Ohio Food and Farms to the Classroom. The discussion focused on what Ohio agriculture looks like, who the Ohio Farm Bureau is, and why the Ohio Farm Bureau and Ohio agriculture care so much about educators and youth.

“We made the connection that why we care about strengthening our communities and helping connect young people to their food system allows them to make more healthy and informed choices moving forward,” Klopfenstein said.

This was followed by an overview and hands-on demonstration of two curriculum kits designed specifically for K-2 students. One of the kits was called “Plant or Animal,” and the other, “What is a Farm?”

“They’re very basic, because kindergarten through 2nd grade, they’re still learning pretty basic concepts,” Klopfenstein said.

The demonstration was orchestrated by a teacher who is also an Ohio Farm Bureau member.

After the morning session, the group took a short walk for lunch at the Taste of Ohio pavilion, before heading to the livestock barns for five show-and-tell gatherings.

“We did a round of barn tours that we called Meet the Farmer,” Klopfenstein said. The group stopped at the swine, cattle, sheep and hog barns. “We had a family lined up at each spot to talk to the teachers in small groups. It was a unique opportunity for them to meet the animals and talk to the farmers.”

Hambrick thought the presentation schedule was very effective. “It connected all the pieces from what we had listened to in the morning and about the different things Farm Bureau does – where things come from – then to go visit those barns and to see those products actually on the fairgrounds,” she said. “I just don’t think it would have been nearly as meaningful if we had done the barn stuff in the morning.”

Teachers also got to talk with some 4-H youth, “which I think impressed several of them about how much those 4-H kiddos do with their animals, and know about caring for their animals,” Klopfenstein said.

Hambrick valued the subject matter experts and how excited they were to share what they get to do every day. “Several of the teachers appreciated getting to connect directly with the farmers to hear why they do what they do,” she said.

Teachers were selected on a first-come, first-serve basis, representing a variety of the state. “We were surprised by how far people came,” Klopfenstein said. “We thought we were going to have a, a high concentration from the Columbus metropolitan area, but teachers came from all over.”

Hambrick, who traveled nearly 70 miles to attend, learned about the program through her relationship with a local county farm bureau.

“Our district participates in the Ag Day experience through the Jackson County Farm Bureau,” she said. “They sent an email after the Ag Day experience and let me know about the opportunity. I reached out to them and told them I’d be interested if they had seats open – and I was selected.”

Hambrick believed it was important for her and her students to learn more about the various aspects of Ohio agriculture and its impact on farmers and consumers. “I guess the real wake-up call to me was for every $1 spent, .15 cents of it goes back to the farmer – the other .85 cents is lost with production cost,” Hambrick said. “Those things make you appreciate when you go buy something and you complain about the price of it.”

Participant responses from a follow-up survey were very positive. “It looks like we got five-star reviews from all the teachers through that survey,” Klopfenstein said.  “Since this was the first teacher training event, I wanted to make sure it was worth their time being at the training, traveling in.”