ST. MARYS, Ohio – Jennifer Van Gundy, a second-grade teacher at Saint Mary’s East Primary School in St. Marys, spent a few days this summer learning how to incorporate agriculture in her classroom.

Van Gundy attended the National Agriculture in the Classroom Conference in Minneapolis through an Ohio Farm Bureau scholarship. “It was awesome and a great experience, and I’m really appreciative toward Ohio Farm Bureau for the opportunity,” she said. Van Gundy has participated in several agriculture in the classroom professional development sessions, but this is the first one she’s attended out of state.

Ohio Farm Bureau awarded Van Gundy, along with two other Ohio K-8 teachers, the National Ag in the Classroom Conference Educator Scholarship. The scholarship is funded by the Ohio Farm Bureau Foundation Patterson Family Ag Literacy Fund.

Van Gundy, who begins her 24th year of teaching elementary school, enjoys incorporating agricultural lessons into her classroom.

“Kids love the hands-on activities and experiments, and just watching things grow and change,” she said.

She also works with the FFA teacher at St. Marys High School to support agriculture programming in her classroom.

“Anytime that I have an idea, I can just say something to him and he’ll usually get some high school kids to come up with a lesson or come and involve my students with his students – it’s been really great – I enjoy it,” Van Gundy said.

Van Gundy did not grow up on a farm. However, she grew up in the country, and currently has a hobby farm where her 19-year-old daughter and 15-year-old son are both involved in FFA.

“It just seemed there was always something coming home,” she said. “It started with chickens and then honeybees, and now we have goats.”

Despite St. Marys’ rural setting, many of Van Gundy’s students don’t live on farms and are very engaged in the agriculture lessons. “They’re always intrigued by the animals and the process of the growth and life cycles,” she said. “It’s just been easy to incorporate into a second-grade classroom – and they love it.”

Van Gundy applied for the scholarship by writing about what she does with her students.

“There was an opportunity where you could write about how you incorporate agriculture into your classroom, and I one day just briefly wrote about how I use agriculture in the classroom, and I won,” Van Gundy said. “It was a wonderful opportunity for professional development, and I’m very grateful to the Ohio Farm Bureau for the scholarship that made it possible.”

This was only the second year the scholarship was offered. It’s a part of Ohio Farm Bureau’s prioritized efforts on statewide ag literacy, which began with the hiring of Mary Klopfenstein as the Young Ag Professional and Ag Literacy Program specialist in 2024.

Klopfenstein has Ohio Farm Bureau’s ag literacy objectives focused on two areas.

“The main thing we’re focusing on, first and foremost, is empowering our county farm bureau members with the knowledge, information, and resources to be able to effectively engage in literacy experiences in their home communities,” Klopfenstein said. “Equipping them to work at community events where they’re working with young people or going into schools and giving presentations, helping them feel most prepared to do that.”

The second goal of the program is to connect with and better support Ohio educators through existing resources, such as the National Ag in the Classroom program, which offers free agriculture lessons directly aligned to Ohio content standards that teachers cover. In addition, Klopfenstein is trying to connect educators to resources that are already available to people in their home communities, such as the county farm bureau, who can be their local experts on where their food is coming from.

“People are always excited to talk about ag literacy, whether it’s farm bureau members trying to figure out how they can better engage with students and the community, or farmers who are always willing to share what they do,” Klopfenstein said. “Sometimes they just need a few resources to help them make it a little more engaging or relevant for the classrooms – that’s where we get to come in, helping to equip them. We’ve also had a lot of positive feedback from teachers.”

Van Gundy felt like the conference was well attended and valued the connections she made with second-grade teachers from around the country and the discussions they had about agriculture in their states. “I met people from Washington and Iowa and Texas,” she said. And it was really neat to hear how they teach things a little differently based on the time of the year – we do insects in the spring, but they do insects in the winter or fall – it just depends on their season.”

She wants to bring those connections to her students as well through a modern pen pal program. “We will be able to make friends and communicate as email buddies, talking about how agriculture looks different from state to state,” Van Gundy said.

The conference workshops covered a wide range of really engaging topics, making it hard for Van Gundy to choose which sessions to attend. “Sometimes I had to just flip a coin.” Vangundy attended sessions on gardening, barnyard STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) activities, STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, mathematics) projects, hydroponics and fertilizer activities.

“There were just so many things – it was just very engaging,” she said.

Van Gundy was able to gather literacy resources to support the new reading series that her school is adopting this year.

“One of the things that is discussed is insects, entomology and pollinators,” she said. “I was able to walk away with so many great literature books that I could incorporate into my class with those lessons.”

Van Gundy is not only excited to share all these ideas and lessons in literature and projects with her students, but also with her colleagues. “I work on a team of seven, and we are all teaching the same standards and lessons that accompany a new reading series,” she said. “I’m super excited to share what I’ve learned with them.”