By Whitney Baxter
Challenged with building solar ovens and water filtration systems, agricultural and life sciences education students put themselves in their future students’ shoes as they underwent a unique training this semester.
Darla Romberger, a graduate student in agricultural education, is leading teacher certification students through the Curriculum for Agricultural Science Education (CASE) AgXplore certification training. After completing the training, future ag teachers will have the skills and knowledge to implement a curriculum based on the AgX concepts.
Romberger said the AgX course aims to engage middle school students in a variety of hands-on activities that introduce them to agriculture topics – plants, renewable resources, animals, food science and more.
“It’s really meant to get middle school students literate with many different facets of agriculture,” Romberger said. “The teacher certification students are also seeing different ways that you can introduce topics to students to build that foundation of agricultural literacy.”
Iowa State is one of only three institutions in the U.S. offering a CASE certification to pre-service teachers this spring.
Jon Davis, associate teaching professor in agricultural education and studies, said the decision to offer it to Iowa State students aligns with the department’s efforts to effectively prepare aspiring teachers.
“Our team saw the opportunity to set our student teachers apart by providing them with this tool to utilize in their practicum experience, as well as elevating their certification as part of their job-seeking pathway,” Davis said.
“We’re starting to see a lot more high school ag programs, both in Iowa and across the United States, have a required middle school rotational course, so this curriculum would fit really well into that piece to equip future teachers with appropriate age level curriculum for sixth, seventh or eighth grade students,” Romberger added.
While guest lecturing in Davis’ class, Romberger walks the Iowa State students through each hands-on activity, helping them see it not only from a middle school student’s perspective, but also from a teacher’s perspective.
“We step back and debrief as a teacher and talk about what did I need to think about in terms of facilitating, what questions was I going to ask, how were we going to summarize and check that students actually comprehend the main concepts from that activity?” Romberger said.
Putting it into practice
Davis and Romberger offered the same training to Iowa State students last fall. Bridget Fisher, a senior in agricultural and life sciences education, was one of the students who completed the training. She said the certification has prepared her to teach the material to students in her student teaching class.
“I have really valued having this certification going into student teaching, as I have used it as a resource in my middle school Ag Exploratory classes,” Fisher said. “I look forward to using the curriculum in my own classroom next fall.”
As a graduate student with 13 years of professional teaching experience, Romberger said this project has reminded her to stop and take a moment to see what her students need.
“This experience has really encouraged me to be in the moment, to learn just to read the room and understand what the needs of learners are at that specific point in time,” Romberger said. “You can always adapt and adjust tomorrow, but I think it’s really important to be in the moment, meeting the needs of your learners.”