New Faces
I am pleased to introduce our new agrisciences teacher, Mrs. Angie First! She has an extensive background in agriculture and a strong interest in FFA. She is 2002 graduate of Michigan State University. Mrs. First grew up on a cattle farm in the thumb and now resides in the Mattawan area where she and her husband Tim raise their 3 kids aged 6-12. They love to hike, swim, and chase their 3 cats.
Mrs. First
Our new agrisciences Technical Assistant is Mrs. Laura Hayman.
These fresh faces bring us renewed energy and ideas, and we already are feeling like a strong department.
Veterinary Science
Veterinary science students from across Kalamazoo County have completed their safety unit and have learned the ins and outs of using their online learning platform to access the classwork on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays when we are in the classroom together, we strive to be putting the online learning to use, applying concepts to doing veterinary science. One of our first projects involved providing baseline medical care for our first foster cat of the year, who the students named Luna. She had been a stray around the home of one of my former students (from ten years ago! Doesn't seem possible!)and when an owner could not be located, she was brought to us. Students performed an initial physical examination, trimmed her nails, weighed her and checked for parasites, performed a blood test for feline leukemia and feline immunodeficiency virus, dewormed her and gave her a rabies vaccination. After completing her medical record, they designed a feeding and socialization protocol for her. We suspect she may be pregnant, so students are eager to find out. Luna has settled in and taken ownership of the Ag building in true feline fashion, and has captured everybody's heart already. She is known, however, for playing an expert level of hide and seek!
Luna supervises the agri-science staff.
Students perform intake examination on a willing Luna.
Luna gets photo-bombed by a vet science student
Animal Technology
With both a morning (taught by Mrs. First) and an afternoon (taught by Dr. Heikes) section of Animal Technology, students are also busy learning to use the blended learning model effectively. They have completed units in classroom and animal occupations safety, online citizenship, and are moving into career readiness and poultry units. These students will start the year with a basic resume and cover letter, complete practice interviews and job applications, then use their experiences and new skills from the course to continually upgrade their employment credentials. In addition, they will use these items when applying to complete job shadows in careers of interest to them.
After career readiness, students will be moving right into the poultry unit. Several have chosen to take part in the FFA Broiler raising contest, in which they will raise a pen of 25 meat chickens, then select 2 to be judged both live and processed, along with their project records, at the end of October. We expect their chicks to arrive this coming week! The entire class will learn about poultry along with them, and we currently have chicken and duck eggs incubating in the classroom.
Chicks due to hatch October 4. Students have been candling them to observe the shadows of the developing embryos within the shells.
The ducks are due a week later. One of them is very active, kicking and moving around as the egg is candled, and students can already see its eye developing.
Both Vet Science and Animal Tech classes also managed to fit in a trip to the pollinator habitat on the Mill renovation site on the edge of Vicksburg. the buckwheat was mainly gone to seed, but the bees were very busy with the sunflowers!
Vet Science and morning Animal Tech students visited the sunflowers on a misty Wednesday morning. The cooler temperatures decreased the pollinator activity, but it was still an impressive sight!
By the time afternoon Animal Tech visited, many more pollinators had emerged and gotten to work.
The honeybees are covered with pollen!
Animal Science
Vicksburg students also have the opportunity to take Animal Science with Mrs. First. These students are in class 5 days per week, and have completed their safety training and workplace readiness units, and are also moving into poultry. Although the 50-minute class period makes hands-on learning a bit more challenging, they will also be engaged in activities and projects throughout the year.
Wildlife and Natural Resources
This is a large, active class of mostly seniors. They have also completed safety training and a brief unit on pollinators, along with a visit to the pollinator habitat. While there, they were able to make targeted observations of the pollinators at work, as well as look for signs of other wild animals, and to observe various plants growing in and around the planting area.
They then moved into a unit on pollution and ecology. Since many forms of pollution are difficult to see, they performed several lab simulations to help them visualize air and water pollution. They are currently working on completing making their own Public Service Announcements on specific pollution sources, and will present them to the class next week.
Air pollution lab: Students used clear water to simulate clean air, then added substances to represent the pollutants that they released over the past 24 hours.
These setups appear pristine, but by the time each student had added their individual share of pollution, the combined the "air" all together, it was a nasty, murky mess!
As we move ahead, we will be examining water quality more closely, and students will perform laboratory testing of surface water samples in the lab in class, and then on-site as we test several local waterways. They will also be working toward perfecting a safe test to detect micro-plastics in water, and will try this out on our water testing day.
Previous students sampling water at Clark Park
and near Sawmill Creek apartments
At Barton Lake public access
Performing on-site testing--real science in the field!
Near Barton Lake outflow
At the Outdoor Education Center
Horticulture
Horticulture students have gotten off to a very fast start this year. This is another very large class of diverse learners, and they seem more than ready to tackle hands-on challenges. They began with safety training and a pollinator unit, since so much of what they grow is dependent upon pollinators to thrive. They also visited the pollinator habitat, and will be working on several projects there throughout this school year.
In addition, they have begun preliminary work on re-landscaping the area in front of the school greenhouse to coordinate with the landscaping installed around the adjacent entrance. Students have assessed the site, measured and made a rough site sketch, and calculated materials needed. Next week, they will begin removing the old degraded mulch and deteriorated landscape fabric and installing the new materials.
They are also hard at work in the greenhouse, with houseplants propagated and growing well, and their first plug trays planted with various seeds. Some of what they grow from these seeds is greens that will help feed a tortoise, and some students are growing catnip for our cat foster.
A group from the horticulture class will also begin harvesting sunflowers from the Mill site this coming week. They hope to dry them for autumn decorations, and perhaps use some in fresh form as well. They also have the potential of harvesting some for seed.
The next major undertaking for this class will be learning the basics of soil and learning to perform soil testing. They will then collect soil samples from uncontaminated agricultural land at the Mill site and test them. Their results will be used as they research apple and pear varieties to plant in the Food Forest that they will initiate. They can then amend the soil as needed, select varieties, graft or obtain rootstock, plan a pest control program, and by spring plant the first fruit trees on the site.
The greenhouse still looks a bit empty, but the students are getting things growing!
Planting seeds in plug trays
John Kern at the Mill pollinator site
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