Project FARM (Fostering Agricultural Research and Mentoring) Professional Development: June 10-11 and July 15-16, 2025
By Amy Zvonar
When students return to their classrooms this fall, in addition to the typical new pencils, paper, and three-ring binders in their classrooms they will also find nets, buckets, and water chemistry test kits. These shiny new school supplies are currently being housed in classrooms in Elmore, Pike and Lee counties. 11 teachers are prepared to facilitate their use by hundreds of 7th and 8th grade science students during the 2025-2026 school year.
All 11 teachers participated in intensive training this summer at Auburn University as part of the Project FARM (Fostering Agricultural Research and Mentoring) teaching fellowship. Over the course of four days of professional development—two in June and two in July—the fellows worked to build new skills and prepare to make their science classrooms more engaging and enriching for students this fall.
Project FARM is a grant program that will extend over 3 years, with teaching fellows learning about important agricultural concepts in the fields of water, food, and forestry. Funded by a grant from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture and headed by Auburn University Chemical Engineering Professor Virginia Davis, the goal is to increase interest in agricultural careers among students by integrating common science classroom topics, like water quality, with an agricultural context (Project FARM link here).
https://portal.nifa.usda.gov/web/crisprojectpages/1032443-project-farm-fostering-agriculture-research-and-mentoring.html
Alabama Water Watch and 4-H Alabama Water Watch were thrilled to partner during this first year of the program and introduce participating educators to the importance of water quality monitoring. Through our involvement in the program, teachers explored the Mary Olive Thomas Demonstration Forest for a day in June and earned AWW’s Water Chemistry Monitoring and Stream Biomonitoring certifications.
They also received copies of 4-H AWW’s curriculum, Exploring our Living Streams, and participated in hands-on demonstrations of how to use the lesson plans from the curriculum in their classrooms.
Teaching fellows share the critters they invented during the Create-A-Critter activity from the EOL’s curriculum. Photo credits: Emily Brown
The teachers’ work did not end after their training with AWW. A key aspect of Project FARM is using partnerships to help the teachers explore various ways to integrate agricultural topics into their science classrooms. Therefore, the remainder of their professional development days at Auburn University were filled with field trips to university sites that make the connection between agriculture and science clear, like the Auburn University Soil, Forage and Water Testing Laboratory and the E.W. Shell Fisheries center.
Visits from County Extension Directors, 4-H Youth Development Coordinators, and Regional Extension Agents created opportunities for teacher-fellows to understand how Extension can assist with field trips and classroom visits during the school year, while discussions with the faculty of the Agriscience Education program at Auburn University helped teacher-fellows understand career paths open to their students in agriculture.
The teachers also met the new director of Auburn University’s Water Resources Center, Dr. William Batchelor, and heard from him about how valuable their students are to the future of agriculture.
The work on partnerships became truly global when we had a special presentation from Global Water Watch-Chile participant and teacher, Debora Ramirez Rojas (what is the appropriate title for her?). She spoke to the teachers about how she helps train educators in Chile to teach about watersheds and gave a short demonstration of a hands-on storytelling activity about watersheds they could adapt for their own classrooms.
4 days of intensive professional development did not excuse these hard-working teachers from homework! These 11 dedicated professionals immediately went home and began applying their new knowledge to writing lesson plans for their classrooms. These lessons all contain original content that synthesizes the Project FARM fellow’s new knowledge of water and water quality with agricultural concepts. The lessons are to be taught in their classrooms during the fall and spring semesters. We can’t wait to see the results!
This work is/was supported by the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture.
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