ORLANDO, Fla. – In 2018, Orange County Public Schools committed to bringing agriscience back into schools. Now every public high school in Orange County offers it as an elective. Agriscience is now in 11 middle schools, with an initiative to expand it to every middle school.
When Avalon Middle School implemented the program in 2018, Jessica Long took on the role of teacher and Future Farmers of America sponsor.
“Agriculture is in everything. It’s in our clothes, our food, our housing. Almost every service in our county is related to agriculture in some way,” said Long. “It is science taken and actually used so kids can have that perspective of this is the real world this is what we’re doing.”
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Long tells News 6 Anchor Julie Broughton that most days the class begins inside with a lesson. Then the group heads outside to care for their flocks of chickens, ducks, geese and sheep. Long explained at the beginning of the school year each student learns to do various tasks, which are then assigned daily. The students also grow plants and crops.
“They are a cohesive unit. They work together. They help each other. When we go to the fair, we’ve actually won. There’s an award called “herdsmen” the kids get for working together, taking care of their pens and keeping their animals clean and talking to the public,” Long said. “They’re just really cool kids and I feel like the program itself has fostered this because if they don’t work together, they cannot be successful and they learn that really early on.”
Broughton spoke with eighth grader Inika Mohan. She is also the FFA chapter president and raises Daisy the sheep.
“It’s really nice having an animal that you can kind of deal with a lot. It’s nice having guinea pigs. They’re small and kind of fun to cuddle with them, but it’s just not the same as having an animal you can walk around and train. It’s a different thing,” she said.
Broughton asked Long if she felt like this class embraced a new way of teaching.
“I would actually say it’s a really old way of teaching. It’s like kind of going back to our roots as Americans and as humans. Our basis in society is agriculture,” Long said. “When they come to my class, they learn history, they learn science, they learn math, they learn how to write correctly. And they’re seeing a real-world application for it. It’s crazy important. What I love is when I have a kid who has never seen a chicken, or a duck, or a sheep, never touched a guinea pig before, and never planted a seed, and they get to do those things and the wow factor, it gives me tingles thinking about it.”
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