Blaker Kinser Curriculum:Teaching Life Skills through Agriculture

The Blaker Kinser garden program engages students in a wealth of agricultural production tasks that “Make it real for the kids!” Students learn not only science, horticulture, biology and math, but more importantly, Life Skills. How does MikeJames, Agriculture & Science teacher, incorporate Life Skills into his curriculum?

Mr. James’s guiding philosophy is that the garden program teaches students life skills and values.  Working in the garden is cooperation, problem solving and critical thinking in action.  You can teach facts and information, but life skills are what students need to succeed in the world.

If you teach the kids life skills AND give them a link to their community and school for the long term, they will come back.  Kids who’ve taken high school agriculture and Jr. college agriculture return frequently, and they proudly announce that this is the place where they got started.

Hands-on real work

Every year, Mr. James wants students to build new projects to keep students engaged in the garden. This year it’s expanding the walkways.  If you look around, you will see examples of past students’ work: benches, shade structures, lathe house, remade tools, and organizers in the tool shed. 

Agriculture Science

The agriculture science class is an elective and is in great demand. Students take it for the whole year. “I want them to see a whole year’s cycle.  They see everything just like the farmers do.”

Each year, Mr. James gets two classes of students. This works well, because it allows him to always have enough work for all. Students come out to the garden four days a week.  The agricultural curriculum is based on a text book, which the class uses as standards-based subject matter content for the work they do in the garden.

Because Life Skills are so important in this program, they form a large part of student assessment.  These are the basic skills that serve students well as they mature and move into the real world.  The following are the criteria for Life Skills assessment:

1. Initiative: Six criteria comprise initiative.  Students rank themselves every two weeks, and Mr. James scores them as well.
2. Stick-to-it –iveness: This boils down to: When you get a job, can you do it, and stick to it and do it right?
3. Safety and Tool Care: Students participate in a safety and tool care session. Then they are tested on their knowledge and handling of tools.
4. Cooperation/team player: Cooperation is essential to get jobs done in a timely and efficient manner.  Students are evaluated on the extent to which they are a team player

• • Agriculture 7 & 8 Course Outline
  • Life Skills Assessment for Agriculture 7 & 8

Typical Class Activities—the students speak…

We had a test to get in the class—like how to use the tools.  Most of the time Mr. James just walks around the garden checking out what’s going on and what people are doing. We’re graded on how we work.  Some things we do?  We got the chickens last week; we feed them to make sure the water is good, and we get their eggs.  We’ll rototill the soil and then rake it out and make it smooth and then we’ll put the plants in.

Teachable Moments: Mr. James speaks…

• I don’t want it to be just like grunt work. So for example, if we apply fertilizer, I’ll ask them what the numbers mean, how does that relate to their home right now?

• This time of year (winter) when they ride around the countryside, I get them to notice which trees are deciduous, which are evergreen. Then which trees in our garden are deciduous and evergreen.  We have these types of discussions as we go.

  For example, we just got the chickens, so we’ll have a whole discussion about poultry operations locally, laying operations and fryer operations.  Will those chickens ever see a male chicken? No. So when will they start laying eggs? I get them so they are laying just now, so the kids can understand their maturation.

• I have a textbook that I use and I have a course outline. The toughest thing is when we don’t have examples. So for example, Patrick’s family owns a dairy, so we’ll have a two or three day discussion about dairy operations, and then go to the diary for a field trip. 
• I follow the textbook.  I try to incorporate the state standards as I teach things, like life science standards—sexual vs. asexual reproduction in plants. That’s how I try to incorporate the standards.  Beyond that, it’s the commitment to those words I mentioned.
• Choices for electives are art, computers, and music. Ag is a “singleton” class.  I like it being just one or two classes, so there can be enough stuff for the kids to work in a real way. And I want them to see a whole year’s cycle. I want them to come in the fall and see all the peppers and tomatoes, etc. This is a year-long class. They’ve seen everything just like the farmers do.

• See the broccoli? That was donated by Fredrick’s Nursery. In the next few weeks, students will pull out the tomatoes, etc, and plant the onions and garlic. The kids will take the onions home, but the garlic, they will show at the fair. To me that’s been the neatest thing is having enough space so the kids can grow real crops and show them at the Fair.  During the summer I had great parental involvement. Some parents were here watering and taking care of the garden throughout the summer.

• Laying irrigation line, digging a trench, constructing raised beds—These all become math problems.

• Take a pressure regulator and teach the kids about how these work. I buy this equipment at a local irrigation store, and they now give me the price our district plumber gets.  So with laser line, we turn the water on every 6” or 12” spacings and I use this exclusively to show kids where and how to plant transplants.  It’s also a math lesson.

“We also talk a lot about the way the Valley was, the way the Valley is and the way it’s going. When I started, a close to a third of the students families were directly or indirectly involved with agriculture. But now in terms of owner operator there’s only one student.”

“I am always thinking about what we’re doing, what we should do next, as opposed to a system where everything is on automatic irrigation.  I come out every day and I walk it and I just see what needs to be done. I figure out who wants to do what and like Jonathan did the rototiller last year, I trust him more now.  A lot of it is dictated by what’s going on in the growing season—what needs to go in, what needs to come out.  There are lots of things to learn by looking, too. I look for the cabbage loopers.