Instituting Ag
Teachers learn lessons to take to their classrooms
MORRIS – On any given day cows, ducks, turkeys and even a peacock can be found on Higgins Farm, but on Thursday morning, the farm was filled with a herd of teachers.
Higgins Farm in Morris was just one stop during the Ag Institute held this week and into next week. Ag Institute is sponsored by Grundy, Kendall and Will County Farm Bureaus. About 30 teachers from all three counties are participating this year.
"It is a one-time thing that teachers earn graduate credit for," Tasha Jordan-Bunting, manager of the Grundy County Farm Bureau said. "The goal, in our eyes, is for them to take everything they learn and incorporate it back into their classrooms."
The teachers are graded by their attendance and the lesson plans they create at the end of the institute.
"Hopefully they'll use those plans," Bunting said.
Thursday, the teachers spent all day in Grundy County, starting with a grain farm tour at Hunt Farms on Higgins Road in Morris. At Higgins Farm, the teachers broke up into teams of two and participated in a Global Positioning System hunt.
The teachers were sent to four spots around the farm, with each spot bearing a new clue to the next. Those clues, however, could not be read until they were within 20 feet of their next coordinates.
As Coal City Intermediate teachers Jenn Rink and Nikki Papesh hurried along, they found themselves at a towering combine.
"Oh how exciting, I get to climb in," Rink said. "This is fun!"
The next set of coordinates led the ladies from the combine behind the Higgins' farm house, here they were greeted by turkeys and ducks wandering around the farm.
"We're still 130 feet away," Papesh said as she stared at her GPS and dodged piles of cow dung.
The second destination was the Higgins' mower, where Rink and Papesh swatted flies in an effort to get their next coordinates, which led the team back to the other side of the farm.
"If we had the kids do this, you know how much fun they would have," Papesh pointed out.
Rink suggested they consider it for a longitude and latitude lesson.
John Davis, educator for the Grundy County Unit of the University of Illinois Extension, hopes to work with Coal City students on a similar hunt for Coal City historical places.
Davis said its important for children to understand that even though their car GPS can take them directly to an address by showing them a map on a screen, the machine is still using longitude and latitude coordinates to give the directions. The exercise Thursday was a small exercise to show how GPS units are used on farms.
With Thursday only being day two of the Ag Institute, Rink said she is looking forward to what else she will learn and experience to share with her students.
"It is very hands-on," she said. "I think the kids will benefit from this and have fun when we incorporate it in."
Ag Institute was established jointly among the three counties in 2003. About 60 percent of the counties in the state have some sort of summer Ag Institute, Bunting said.
"It is a shame our kids live so close to farming communities and have no idea," Jonita Bergfeld, a teacher at Walnut Trails Elementary School in Shorewood, said. "This has been very interesting."
The teachers were headed to Cargill Inc. off of the Illinois River for an elevator tour to see how grain is shipped, Bunting said. The last activity of the day was a tour of the Dresden Island Lock and Dam.
For more information on future Ag Institutes, call the Grundy County Farm Bureau at (815) 942-6400.