Nucla High School students in grades nine to 12 have the option of an FFA agriculture class, but that doesn’t exist at the middle school level at this time. Still, Katey Herland, who’s wearing many hats at the new K-12 Nucla school, is helping the middle school students develop their knowledge and appreciation of agriculture.
Herland grew up in Rock Creek. Her family was in the cattle business in the 1980s and 1990s, until they exited that and focused on goats. At one point, they had 200 head of goats. They raised pigs too, and basically grew and preserved much of their own food in an off-the-grid lifestyle.
She’s got an associate’s degree in ag science, and in addition to teaching a PE class for the middle school and a home economics class for the high school, she’s teaching an ag elective for sixth through eighth grade.
Though the program is just starting out, they did make a trip to the Pinion Farmstead in Nucla and had a class with Melanie Eggers, of the Apple Core Project. Students learned about regenerative agriculture, something Herland says all agriculturalists will have to learn to embrace and incorporate in the next few decades.
The kids have done much research. Herland has had them looking into global impacts of agriculture, developing a working knowledge of the top commodities. They’re learning about the countries that have competition for commodities and what it means to import and export. Kids have studied state level ag economics too, the competition that exits within the U.S.
Her class created news broadcasts, during which they relayed information in a way that others could understand. They’ve had to learn to cite their sources too.
Herland said students also worked on a project that focused on specialty products, niche products, in agriculture. And, they’ve taken time to explore career paths in ag, and learn what those entail.
Herland’s middle school class is a nine-week program. And, all students will rotate through it, along with other nine-week sessions on art, astronomy and home economics. The first group just finished up their rotation, and Herland got her new group this week.
She said it can be challenging in a small school to develop a curriculum that reaches students in all three grades, sixth through eighth, and to meet them where they are, but she’s also learning and adjusting to see what works.
Though they traveled down the road to Pinion Farmstead this last week as a finale, she said field trips aren’t always possible, especially when the ag class is not a core class, and students really need to be present and not miss their math, English language arts and science classes. Guest speakers are something she’s going to focus on going forward.
“This is a door-opening experience,” she said. “Ag is not X, Y, Z. It’s a very broad field of study, and in middle school we are opening the door and shedding light on the big picture of ag.”
Herland said those striving to survive as small producers in agriculture must “open their eyes to new methods and possibilities.” She said the future will be about diversification, and she’s trying to plant those small seeds carefully in the young people.
