September's here, and in Yuma County that means the start of the growing season for cool season crops. Since Yuma's known as the Winter Salad Bowl of the nation providing over 90% of the country's winter vegetables, KAWC wanted to take a look at what kids are learning about agriculture in school.
At the Yuma Union High School District, agriscience is offered at Cibola, Gila Ridge, Yuma and San Luis high schools. Most courses are available for two years, but at Yuma High School, students can study agriscience with McKenna Marconato for up to four years.
As part of the Yuma Union High School District’s Career and Technical Education program, students taking agriscience are automatically enrolled in FFA, Future Farmers of America, a CTE Student Organization. FFA offers students extra opportunities for learning, field trips and competitions.
What students learn depends on the level of the course they’re taking, but according to Marconato, her class is a life class.
"People think, like, "Oh, well, it's agriscience so all you learn is science, and then I start bringing out the numbers and the kids are like, 'Oh, you told me this isn't math class!' and I'm like, 'But math is everywhere,' so it's all just real world application of those skills," Marconato explained. "And I think it kind of helps the kids get buy-in to their other classes as well when they're like, 'Oh, so I kind of do need to know this math that I don't know why I'm learning it, but my teacher’s making me learn this math. But then I come over here and we're trying to figure out the square footage of the greenhouse so we know how much shade cloth to buy.' They're really using those skills in a real world application. And I think just having that visual connection of like seeing the math that they're doing and understanding how it translates to something they might need; I think it all kind of comes together.
"We talk about history and the the evolution of different things that we use and how it used to be cows pulling plows, and now we have tractors and GPS things and stuff like that. So I think this kind of just brings it all together. I think it ties it up in one nice little bow to where it's just life; like, this is just a life class in many different ways."
The first level of agriscience at YHS acts as more of an introduction to agriculture, but level two is where the class really becomes hands-on.
"We have chickens and we have a garden so they can kind of decide; like, I have the kids that I have to pull out of the garden when it's their turn to take care of the chickens because they're, like, 'Ugh, chickens!' and then I have the kids who don't want to leave the chickens alone to go to their plants," Marconato said. "So we do try and leave a lot of hands on components for these kids. And they sit at a desk all day, so when they come to my class, they want to go outside. They want to go pull weeds. They want to go rake. They want to dump the chicken waters, find eggs, whatever it is.
"In a day and age where technology is very easy to just put up a PowerPoint or show a video to the kids to keep them busy, I always take them outside and I'm like, 'Hey, we're going to pull weeds and I'm going to pull them right there with you like I'm not any better than you guys. We're all going to do this together."
Marconato believes this further buys in her students, especially those who don't perform as well in a conventional classroom with just pencil and paper. In her class, a test might look like grabbing a chicken and showing her where the different parts are.
The chickens are well-loved in her class. While Marconato explained that chickens aren't really interested much in people, she's observed that one seems to be the exception and has become the class mascot. Chickie Minaj, as she's known, loves to spend time with the students and will accompany them to career fairs, showing off as she stands on the table.
In Marconato's course, upperclassmen become more career-focused. Level three students learn more about the business component of agriculture while level four are more actively looking into their career options. Given Yuma's strong agricultural industry, there's plenty of opportunity for students.
"There is a lot of networking in this program especially because we are the lettuce capital of the world, the winter vegetable capital of the world; ton of ag happens here," Marconato noted. "And I will say: our kids, they don't realize what they live in until I start to explain to them and they're like, 'Wow, this place is actually kind of a big deal! Like it's cooler than just being Yuma.' And I'm like, 'No, you guys live somewhere that's talked about in the whole United States.'
"So there is a lot of networking. We go out and meet a lot of different farmers. The kids get to go out into those fields and, like, we watch cilantro harvest and we go into packing plants and that's where those kids make those connections for themselves. And they meet these people so that one day when they want to apply for a job there, they can say, 'Hey, like, you remember me? I came with Miss Marconato and we did that tour' and they're like, 'Oh yeah!' and then they can get jobs, internship, shadowing, things like that."
Marconato explained that a lot of students end up becoming interested in the field, more than would be expected.
"I have the kids that are [coming] in their first day of freshman year, and they're like, 'Yeah, my counselor just put me here. I don't know what agriculture even means,' and then they leave here and they're like, 'Yeah, I want to be a vet' or I have some students that want to go into ag law and fight for water rights and things like that for our farmers," she said. "So I do see the switch in a lot of kids. 90% of them do not come in here with the thought of, 'Oh, I love agriculture, I really want to work in there.' They don't know what it means, but I feel like I light that fire under them to become interested in it and to realize what a big industry it is and the impact that it has."
Students get exposed to a lot of agricultural activities through the class and FFA.
Through the FFA competitions, students will undergo mock job interviews and veterinary scenarios, like showing how to restrain a dog for a vaccine. For aquaculture, they might be identifying fish and doing feed ratios. They might also be involved with livestock judging and evaluating meat.
Districtwide, the agriscience classes focus considerably on work-based learning so that students can be integrated into the fields early on. In Marconato's senior class, for instance, they take a dual-credit course on tractor safety from Arizona Western College.
"They have to learn how to drive a tractor, have to check the oil," she said. "They hook up an implement, they drive it. It's in partnership with AWC, so we take the kids to AWC for the day and let them drive a tractor. They don't have to have a driver's license. I don't know why sometimes I get on a tractor with a kid who doesn't have a driver's license, but I do!
"And, so, things like that I think really makes our kids more sellable to the community as kids who can work right out of school; we want them to be ready to enter that workforce."
Marconato shared that some kids work at AWC on the farm and others have internships with the Five Rivers feedlot from McElhaney.
"We have great kids so our kids don't ever stay in Yuma," she said. "They all are so successful and really reach for really high goals to be completely honest with you. And so a lot of them end up at [the University of Arizona] or these bigger universities, and they all snatch them up.
"They might come back. I haven't been in the profession long enough to see them come back, you know, after college. I'm kind of in my first group of kids that would be graduating college. But we hope that they come back. We do have a few that stay around, but most of them end up moving up, moving out, going somewhere else, going to a college and end up getting snatched up by them instead of our community. But we do hope they come back eventually."
This reporting is supported by a grant from the Arizona Local News Foundation.
