October

LEAD success again!

LEAD Conference

This year our students that attended the (Leadership Experience and Development) LEAD conference went with a goal of putting fourth a large effort and emptying their "tanks". They worked very hard and were very self motivated. Three of our students were recognized as "Best Vice President" Maria Scarpantonio, Best Parliamentarian, Jayden Johnson, and Best Historian, Joseph Mild.  Jenna Shallop and Harini Manjula Duraipandiyan worked very hard and each time I saw them were volunteering to answer questions and displaying leadership with our team as well as other attending chapters. NJ State FFA Staff and NJ FFA officers commented to me about how hard they worked and how special they all are. I am so proud and so blessed to have a devoted and dedicated group.  Please join me in congratulating all of our LEAD attendees. You all made the event magical and rewarding! Feel free to post a comment to these students below.

Course Updates

Ag Research and Development

Students worked hard and put forth effort (sometimes emitting smoke from their ears) to choose a research topic. Students had two topics of 1) current and looming destructive pest for NJ: Spotted Laternfly and 2) Antibiotic resistance. After much discussion and leaning on our Somerset County Extension Agent, our students decided to move forward with research Antibiotic resistance.

Animal & Plant Biotechnology

Lab notebooks are a major part of this course especially the discipline to keep it up with class. Students have learned safety procedures and common math operations for lab use.  We are now doing lessons on DNA replication and will be presenting projects of how DNA replication happens and how it is useful in biotechnology.

Plant Science

Students have just completed their soils units to understand soil properties, determine soil texture, structure, structure grade, permeability, and run tests to determine these characteristics.  We also recently completed a soil chemistry unit where students develop an understanding of pH's control over nutrient availability, determining salt / nutrient content in soils, and how to remedy both physical and chemical problems soils may have.

Intro to Food, Agriculture, and Natural Resources (FANR)

Have just finished a unit for communication.  In this unit we discussed the importance of verbal and visual communication, presentation skills in voice, presence, effect, and power of expression. Students also learned parliamentary procedures and developed a rubric of characteristics effective teams have.  We have recently moved into learning science lab equipment and safety.

SAE projects

Parents, If you have not had a chance to visit the AET site yet, please take a look at the AET home page and get somewhat familiar. I would like you to post a comment in the comment window below on one thing you learned your student can benefit from, or post a question you have. Both are welcome and encouraged.  My goal is to see growth in student AET log ins and, records, knowledge, and subsequent recognition. This will possible with help and encouragement from parents. It may be as easy as just asking a simple question such as "tell me about..."

Welcome 2018-2019 Agricultural Science Students!

Welcome 2018-2019 Agricultural Science Students!

Welcome

I am happy to welcome new students and those returning. I am looking forward to an excellent and inspiring year. I know our students will have a great year just like last year.  I will be periodically adding new posts to this blog through the year so that parents and others can see what students are learning. 

Pumpkins

We worked very hard just before last school year ended to plant what we thought were deer resistant plants for the purpose of raising funds from the pumpkins and zinnias. The deer nibbled away on the zinnia leaves and flowers, and pumpkins were reduced by deer and a leaf fungus.  Because of the damage we will have nothing to harvest.

We also threw a rotten cheese pumpkin in our compost pile before the school year ended.  Our compost pile is located inside a fence. Seeds from the rotten cheese pumpkins germinated and we have three large pumpkins which we are finding a productive way to use.  We are open to ideas so post a comment below if you want to share! 

I learned one very important from this: deer do not eat plants behind tall fences. We will be exploring the option of adding a fence around out garden space so we can keep animals from damaging our crops.  

Started Seed

We are blessed to have so much growing space with heat.  Plants we have grown in the greenhouse have been given to the Culinary Arts program. We started seed for about 700 lettuce plants and 20 cherry tomatoes.  We will likely run a growing tests on our lettuce and tomatoes.  We have made much progress on learning how to make lettuce thrive; but, we have much to learn for growing tomatoes!
Currently we have about 160 lettuce plants in their growing containers and we have plenty left to transplant. 

Beginning FFA Career Development Event preparation

New Jersey FFA (formerly Future Farmer's of America) will organize four events/ competitions this November to be hosted at Rutgers New Brunswick.  These events will be in Fruit and Vegetable Identification, Land Judging, Milk Products and Processing, and Turfgrass Management. Student from our program have earned 1st, 2nd, and 3rd places in the state and Rutgers Undergraduate Turfgrass program scholarships totaling $4,000.  Looking forward to preparing students for these events and seeing them do well. Students placing in the top three of any event are recognized by NJ FFA on stage with an award that sometimes includes cash prize. Students placing demonstrate technical skills they may apply in a future college program or career.   
Several students will be attending the FFA LEAD conference to learn leadership skills and get inspired and energized for the this school year.  Last year our officer team that attended brought home the only awards given out for Outstanding Officer Team and Outstanding Greenhand.

SAE's

Agricultural education programs are designed to utilize three aspects of learning to make learning a comprehensive system for students.  The three aspects are 1) Classroom Instruction, 2) FFA (leadership), 3) Supervised Agriculture Experience (SAE) which are projects either out of class or school based.  With SAE's, students are given an opportunity to learn a specific area which they are interested in such as: animal or plant biology, environmental science, social systems of agriculture, and even exploring agricultural careers. SAE's are a way for students to explore career options (Exploratory SAE) and when they ready to move on they can learn skills by having employment (Placement SAE), owning and operating a small business (Entrepreneurship SAE), or answering a scientific question using research (Research SAE).

Students can earn awards for their SAE projects, they can earn honorary FFA degrees, and even earn grants to improve and expand their SAE projects. In order to take advantage of the SAE benefits, students must make a plan and keep formal records.  Students being enrolled in our Agricultural Science program have free access to an online SAE record keeping system (AET click here to see the site and explore).  First year students in the program have started to complete their profile. Returning students have SAE's already recorded in their AET account and have earned at least one honorary FFA degree.

I am hopeful that by educating student families, students will then be encouraged to keep records of their out of class projects and earn more awards and degrees. Their are students in the program which have chores or projects they are doing at home and have excellent SAE projects that have not been recorded or formalized to earn awards and degrees. Please help me in encouraging our students in making SAE's and record keeping part of their routine and earn some well deserved recognition! Post a comment below or write me an email (mr.fargo@scvths.net) to learn more.

Have a great week!
Mr. Fargo