Major projects accomplished this year

• Florida Agriculture in the Classroom, Inc. continues to try to reach students and the public about the importance of agriculture in new, innovative ways. Some include: FFA students teaching elementary school kids about agriculture, Ag Learning Barns that take agriculture education from school to school and an Agriculture Literacy Day promotion with industry representatives reading an ag-related book in classrooms around the state. These programs and their use of grassroots networks of industry volunteers helped FAITC increase substantially the numbers of teachers and students reached.
• AgriSmarts is an agricultural education program in which FFA and FAITC are partnering. Florida FFA developed AgriSmarts, a sticker book lesson that teaches grade school kids about classroom items that come from the farm. FFA officers teach the lesson using material FAITC has printed. In addition, FAITC uses as an incentive a promise to pay local FFA chapters $50 for each class taught up to three classes. Other student groups have expressed an interest in participating in the AgriSmarts program. Another FAITC inititative, Ag Learning Barns, uses the lending library concept to reach students. It is a learning station built to look like a barn and stocked with agriculture-related literature, videos, games and toys that travels from school to school. Teachers borrow items from the barn to take into their classrooms. FAITC reimburses volunteers up to $1,000 for the cost of building the barn and stocking it with materials, and asks that the barn travel to at least five schools during the school year. Thirty-eight counties have signed up to build barns in their areas so far.
• The second Florida Agriculture Literacy Day, March 17, 2005, was a great success. More than 1,100 farmmers, ranchers, industry representatives and FFA students signed up to go into classrooms statewide and read designated books about agriculture to more than 65,000 students.
  

Major impacts the program had this year

• Florida Agriculture in the Classroom, Inc. (FAITC) estimates it reached more than 4,700 teachers and more than 210,000 students in 2005. The organization believes there is growing awareness and interest in the program by teachers and volunteers. FAITC doubled its efforts to attend as many agriculture industry and educator conferences to raise awareness of the program. Also, FAITC redesigned and relocated its website so it can eventually move to holding workshops online. Interest in new programs—AgriSmarts, Ag Learning Barns and Agriculture Literacy Day—continued to grow and helped boost FAITC numbers as well.