Great Opportunities in Urban Agriculture: Planning for Teaching in Non-Traditional Programs

I attended a regional suburban agricultural education program in Connecticut during high school that changed my life. Prior to that enrollment, I had always liked to work with animals and thought that veterinary medicine would be my chosen career. My goals were limited to that single aspiration until I attended this program. I was not a traditional agriculture student and had no real agricultural experience to speak of at home. None of my extended family had an agrarian background and my experience was limited to the traditional, small family vegetable garden. I was a Boy Scout preparing for my Eagle rank and enjoyed the many things the outdoors offered me, so I decided to apply. The high school agriculture program was highly selective and required several recommendations. Upon acceptance I was required to have an SAE project and decided to raise and show rabbits making it into a specialty animal production project. Although the project didn't qualify me to compete for any awards to a significant degree, the transferable skills I learned in building our portfolio-based SAE project and the discipline I acquired associated with the record keeping involved in tracking income, expenses, hours, and working within a budget provided me with experience I'll use throughout my career. The Ag Ed department of my high school became my support area and I felt comfortable there surrounded by students who shared my interests and teachers who recognized my potential. By my senior year I had became FFA president. I led a committee which sent school supplies and agricultural materials to a school in Narok, Kenya and in my first year of college I was awarded the national H.O. Sargent Award for promoting diversity. Over my four years of high school I saw my understanding of an agrarian life broaden. My Ag Ed classmates and I left this program well prepared to either pursue an ag related career or other career pursuits because we had acquired job skills through hands on learning. We even left high school with solid resumes based on our SAE portfolios. My own career goal had changed. I had seen how my agriculture teachers and the program affected my life and my fellow students and I decided to become an agriculture teacher. My own experience and personal growth is a testament to the fact that large, suburban agricultural education programs offer great opportunities. Therefore, this past fall I asked to complete my student teaching at an urban agricultural program. I felt I had a lot to offer my students. What I did not realize in September was that working in an urban setting would be a very special challenge. What I quickly learned was that many of the students were not necessarily interested in agriculture nor were they contemplating careers in agriculture. A significant number had applied to this school because it was safer than the other major traditional city high schools they had to choose from and felt no particular pride in attending the agricultural education program. My students came from a wide variety of inner city middle schools and in many cases were not prepared for the rigors of high school. This is reflected in their reading, writing and math skills. Walls needed to be scaled before these students could fully enjoy the benefits of agricultural education. Urban students can have a very hard time relating to agriculture since it seems so foreign. Some of them live in very poor areas of the city where even a tiny vegetable garden is unheard of. Often indoor plants are a novelty; some students' homes may have a few window boxes filled with seasonal flowers. There is little grass to tend during the spring and summer months. I had students who did not know what a plant bulb was. Their images of an agrarian world are limited to books or TV. The experiences of urban students can vary. I had students who had never left their city homes and, therefore, were simply amazed when taken to a park on the outskirts of the city to view the fall foliage. …