Training ag’s next gen
The high school’s Agricultural Academy is exploding in popularity, part of a push to expand trades and arts education
The Rappahannock County High Schools’ Agricultural Academy program that trains students for both blue and white collar work in the industry has exploded in popularity since its inception two years ago.
Michele Fincham and Rich Hogan, teachers who oversee the program that supplements students’ traditional academic curriculum, predict that upward of a third of the schools’ total student population are involved.
The academy allows students to enroll in one of two tracks, each providing an opportunity to earn up to a few workforce certi cations. The rst track places students on the path of becoming veterinarians through education in animal sciences, while working closely with Dr. Tom Massie of Rose Hill Veterinary Clinic. The other sets students on course to enter the workforce following graduation as technical farm hands a er completing classes on welding and small engine repairs, among others.
For many of the students in the program, it could provide an alternative to college, which isn’t for everybody, Superintendent Dr. Shannon Grimsley said. “The interesting thing that
I think is awesome about the ag academy is it’s really engaged a part of our community that I feel like wasn’t engaged before too much with the school division,” she said.
When the academy first started in 2020, it was primarily focused on veterinary science and led by Fincham. But her professional relationship grew with Hogan, who shares a hallway with her, and he helped expand the program with agricultural trades outside her area of expertise. Their respective domains of study synergized to create what the academy is today, and organizers have plans to expand it further in the years to come.
Adjacent to the academy is the schools’ Future Farmers of America (FFA) chapter, a student organization focused on service in the agricultural community. Being in the academy isn’t required to join FFA, but there is a great deal of overlap between the two. Rappahannock’s chapter, sponsored by Fincham, has grown in size significantly since starting just a few years ago following an intense recruitment effort. Its members can be found purchasing Christmas gifts for families in need or serving local farmers at breakfast events.
Many of the students involved in the academy and FFA don’t come from agriculture or farming backgrounds, Fincham said. But those who do bare a strong personal connection with the land and agricultural sciences within the Rappahannock community, according to high school Principal Carlos Seward, who helps Fincham and Hogan facilitate the programs.
“You can see the excitement in the kids … [I] just haven’t seen them light up like this before, and coming off the heels of COVID, that’s what we want to see — to re-engage them in their learning,” Grimsley said. “These types of programs are great for that.”
Senior Olivia Gibson, the school’s FFA president who’s planning to attend Virginia Tech to study animal science and become an agriculture teacher, said many students join FAA and enroll in the academy in search of school involvement and community.
“You can be interested in animals, you can be interested in public speaking, you can be interested in plants — pretty much anything and just have a place there,” she said. “It’s just very inclusive to everyone I think, and it doesn’t really matter what your background is. There’s something for you in it.”
Fincham said that students also respond well to her and Hogan, as many take several classes and build meaningful relationships with them throughout their high school careers.
“We really build relationships with each one of our students. We care about them on a more personal level. Especially in high school, they need that type of mentorship,” Fincham said. “And I think that’s what really helps build our classes up is that bond, and at the same time, the amount of hands-on and industry experience they’re gaining.”
The academy is part of a broader initiative at the schools to invest in trades and arts with the Career and Technical Education (CTE) program, which includes the Health Sciences Academy, a partnership with Rapp Center for Education. The schools hope to launch next year a fine arts academy and trade academy that would be in partnership with Lord Fairfax Community College, according to Grimsley.
CTE received acclaim from the Alexandria-based National School Boards Association, which came to Rappahannock in February to report a feature story on the program. Fincham was invited to travel to San Diego on Friday and meet with the association about the agriculture academy, which caught their attention.
“These career and technical education programs now do two things,” Seward said. “One, they honor the spirit of work and they fill those blue collar jobs that local, state and national studies show we don’t have enough of.”
But Piedmont District School Board member Rachel Bynum, also a coproprietor of Sperryville’s Waterpenny Farm, would like to see the agriculture academy broadened to prepare students for a wider array of careers in farming, and potentially expand its focus toward nurturing a stronger local food economy rather than investing most resources into training for commodity farming.
“When you look at the farms that are featured on the Rappahannock Farm Tour, for example, those farms and our farm are not very much represented in the current ag academy,” she said.
Bynum also suggested the schools should place a larger emphasis on teaching the next generation of farmers to preserve their mental health and quality of life as hundreds in the industry have died by suicide in recent years after struggling to keep up with debt and other demands of agruciltural life, such as isolation.
Expansions to the program she said could include entrepreneurship education, like marketing and money management, to help local farms be more economically sustainable. The schools have plans to coordinate with the business department to provide students an opportunity to gain those skills within the context for farming, Seward said.
Also in the works, according to the principal, is exploring vinosity training where students could learn to manage and maintain vineyards and wineries, a large and still growing agritourism industry in Rappahannock and the Piedmont region. There are also plans to build an aquaculture lab for students to learn fish cultivation.