Taking the farm to the classroom

FARMERS are returning to the classroom in a new educational programme  –  but not as the students.
This year farmers from around the country began beaming into primary school classrooms for video calls once a fortnight as part of the Beef + Lamb New Zealand-driven Farmer Time initiative.
Among them was Aria sheep and beef farmer Wendy Coup.
She was linked up with teacher Rebecca Coombe from Orewa Beach School to deliver five 30-minute sessions via Zoom in the first term of this school year.

VIRTUAL TOURS
Students got virtual tours of her farm,  sent a bag of wool and were invited to share their observations about how their lives were similar or different to Wendy’s.
“We don’t have an internet connection on the farm and we have patchy cell reception,” Wendy said.
“So my thinking was, if I’m going to bring the farm to them, I’m going to have to prepare ahead of time.”
Wendy started with an introductory session where she focused on three questions: what do you know, what do you see and what do you wonder?
“I can tell them what I see but I’ve got adult eyes that have been farming for a long time. These are children who have maybe never had this experience.
“I wanted to understand what their experience of what they were seeing was.”
Wendy said each time she was dialed into the class she would see students sitting with wide eyes “like little possums” waiting to see what they would learn that day.

EXPERIENCE
She said the children looked at a photo of her house and noted how “beautiful” it was and how much land there was to run around on.
“To me that’s what we were trying to do. We were trying to get them to have some kind of experience, even though it’s virtual.
“Getting them to share how they related to it was really important to me.”
Students learned the difference between pet dogs and working dogs when Wendy showed them how her dogs were more like her employees.
“They’re like a friend and a workmate, whereas their experience of dogs was probably that they live in the house and they sit on your lap.”
They got to see videos of the dogs working, with one very noisy and the other not, and photos of how they were housed.
Wendy said she wanted to give the students an accurate, and age-appropriate, understanding of farming, which meant she didn’t shy away from some of the more uncomfortable topics.

SMELL OF A FARM
A few weeks into the programme, Wendy sent a bag of wool to Auckland that had been harvested in the woolshed.
She asked Rebecca not to open it until their next session because she wanted the students to have the experience of the smell infiltrating the classroom because she thought it would be interesting.
“Well, it was really interesting. They were all like ‘ew that really stinks.’  They were hilarious.”
Wendy said part of the exercise was making the kids a bit uncomfortable, because that was the reality of farm work.
“Even just the smell of wool. This afternoon we’re going docking and we’re going to smell. We’re going to have blood on us, we’re going to have shit on us probably, and that’s part of the experience of being a farmer.”

HARDER STUFF
Another of the difficult topics Wendy raised was scanning and weaning cows.
She said she expected it to be something the students would be uncomfortable with at first, and although they were quieter than usual, they handled it well.
Wendy worked to get the students to understand the intentions behind what she and her husband did on their farm.
Pasture to plate was brought up in discussions about how Wendy had lots of animals, but what she was really doing was growing grass.
“And if we don’t grow grass then we can’t grow animals.
“It was important to me to get them to understand this was not just about animals, this was about growing food that eventually will be on your plate.”
Wendy said when it came to conversations about farm vehicles and safety, many of the students were quite astute.
“I was getting them to give me reasons, rather than me just saying this is why.
“They were amazing, they picked it up even though they had never been here.”
As an ex-high school teacher and someone who now works with rural women through Agri-Women’s Development Trust, Wendy thought Farmer Time had the right bend to suit her interests.
She said she agreed to be part of the pilot because she wanted to give kids who possibly had no connection to farming an insight into the industry, but she found she benefitted from the experience too.
“I think it was a lovely experience both for me and for them.
“If they take away some small snippet of memory that’s positive then it was definitely worth my time.”

ROLE MODEL
Wendy thought it was important particularly for the little girls in the class to have a female farming role model in front of them.
“Because to them, what’s their image of a farmer? Is it a man with a hat on?”
Wendy said her enrolment in agriculture college came just two years after it became a co-educational institution and there were only 10 females in a cohort of about 100.
“There are so many women involved in agriculture now, it has changed since I went to agriculture college and we were in the minority.
“And that’s a great thing. We’re seeing a lot of women stepping into leadership roles within the sector too.
“Part of doing Farmer Time was having that message too that it doesn’t matter if you’re a boy or a girl, you can do these things. And it doesn’t matter that you live in the city.”
Growing up Wendy wanted to be a jillaroo, an Australian term for a young woman working on an Australian station, but was told she was “too intelligent” for the line of work.
But she wanted to change the perception that farming and school subjects like agriculture didn’t require brains.
“There’s this stereotype that it’s a subject where you can go and stick your fingers in the dirt and plant some seeds, but actually agriculture is not like that.
“Agriculture actually has a very strong science focus.
“We need these young people to understand that. This is a serious subject.
“It can be a lot of fun but it has a serious science background. And it’s constantly evolving and using science to continue into the future to deal with problems we’re facing.”
Although Wendy has opted out of continued involvement with Farmer Time, she said she was looking forward to seeing where the initiative goes with endless opportunities for content.