More ag classroom teachers on deck

PROPONENTS OF TEACHING AGRICULTURE in primary and secondary schools in Ontario will be glad to know plans are underway to have up to 50 ag in the classroom teacher ambassadors trained and available by 2018-19.

That’s about twice as many as there are now, and I suspect it will be one of the highlights revealed when AgScape, whose tagline is ‘the voice of agriculture in the classroom in Ontario,’ holds its inaugural annual meeting at the University of Guelph next week.

The organization, formerly known as Ontario Agri-Food Education Inc., connects underemployed teachers with regular classroom teachers, to help teach agriculture and food lessons.

It changed its name last year to AgScape – an amalgam of agriculture and landscape – because it wanted to convey a broader message that included food. The agricultural landscape includes food. Thus, AgScape.

AgScape receives core funding for many of its initiatives from the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (OMAFRA).

It’s also changing the way it trains teachers. It’s raising funds ($375,000) for a pro-

gram it calls the Business of Food, an online training platform for teachers who can deliver ag and food lessons. It will be an online course that will be accessed through a secure portal on the AgScape website.

The Business of Food initiative would replace onsite training. The organization has traditionally trained teachers in small numbers, about two or three at a time, usually at its headquarters in Milton. But that’s not resource effective. For example, if someone wants to take the training soon after the organization had completed a training course, they had to wait until the next in-person course becomes available.

The teacher ambassador program is exclusive to Grades 7 through 12. All trained teacher ambassadors will be able to teach lessons on topics that the farming community wants young people to know about: local food, food security, food safety, economics, agriculture in Canada, organics, livestock production, climate change, environment initiatives, biotechnology, technology and innovation, and careers. Impressive! In fact, all lessons contain a career component, designed to ultimately help fill the chronic shortage of qualified personnel in the agri-food sector.

AgScape teachers are paid supply-teacher rates for as long as they’re in the school. In-class time can range from about an hour (to teach one lesson) to all day, when teaching multiple classes or lessons.

In 2016, teacher ambassadors had class time with more than 3,000 students in 83 schools, covered by 45 school boards. They delivered 130 lessons.

But they could have done more, if they had more people. They’ve had to turn down requests from schools to give lessons because they didn’t have the human resources to deliver them.

With the new support from OMAFRA, AgScape will be better able to meet demand... at a crucial time, when there is such a thirst for knowledge about the agriculture-food connection, no matter what age. OMAFRA funds cover not only the teacher ambassador program, but also core components of our other initiatives. That said, this core support represents only about one-third of their overall budgetary needs. They still rely heavily on industry support to operate.

Many organizations are trying to reach youth, in assorted ways. Everyone has their role. But AgScape is the key to getting into schools, with honest agriculture info.

“We have no agenda except to provide accurate, balanced, curriculum linked information to students via our trained teacher ambassadors and other initiatives,” says Colleen Smith, AgScape executive. “We are proponents of healthy food choices, a balanced perspective on many ag-related hot-button issues, and ag-career information.”

Their role is crucial. Good luck AgScape with your new launch.