At Western Christian I have the joy and privilege to educate students about the importance of agriculture in their daily lives. I teach courses ranging from AFNR (Agriculture Food and Natural Resources), to Ag Power and Metals. My goal as an agriculture educator is to not only teach students about the importance of ag in their life, but to give them tools to learn how to AGvocate for the future of agriculture and grow in appreciate for the creations God has given to us.
To compliment learning how to AGvocate for agriculture, I also get to serve as our FFA chapter advisor. FFA provides students with the chance for personal growth, premier leadership, and career success through agriculture education. As a chapter we are able to promote agriculture through student, chapter, and community growth to well round ourselves with skills to advocate for agriculture.
In addition to our classroom experiences and FFA chapter, agricultural education also promotes students to be involved in Supervised Agricultural Experiences (SAE's). These experiences allow students to connect what they are learning in the classroom to the field. Without one of the three components, the chance and ability to learn how to AGvocate for agriculture is weakened.
As you can probably guess agricultural education has played a huge role in my life since the beginning. Growing up on a small diversified farm in southeastern Iowa I was exposed to agriculture at an early age. This early exposure from my parents sparked my interest for agriculture and allowed me to pursue it even more passionately as I went throughout high school and college. My interest to be an agricultural education instructor and FFA Advisor was ignited by the two advisers that I had while attending Iowa Mennonite High School. While I had grown up knowing that Christ and agriculture were part of my daily life, it wasn't until high school that I realized how important these two passions were to me. These two advisers pushed me to not only love agriculture, but to also love Christ with all of my being. They each showed me how to pursue Christ while still having a passion for educating other people about the importance of agriculture in our day-to-day lives. I went on to pursue my Agricultural Education Degree at Iowa State University(granted I have been a Hawkeye fan all my life;)) and continued to grow my passion for Christ and agricultural education.
I am extremely blessed to be able to teach at a place where I can share my two greatest passions with students each and every day. Having the honor of starting a brand new agricultural education program at Western Christian is a dream come true, but more importantly being able to start an agricultural program and share Christ with each and every student, is something that is rare to find. I am excited to teach university students to develop the same passion for agricultural education this fall.