The Steps to Effectively Utilizing Community Resources in an Agriscience Program

THEME ARTICLE I was completely out of my comfort zone. I was a small-town ranch kid from West Texas living and teaching in a large consolidated school outside of Lincoln, Nebraska. I was in the same situation that many new teachers find themselves...a new location with few contacts or acquaintances. One advantage I had, however, was an experienced teacher already in the department who was able to point out those important community relationships, as well as introduce me to a successful method for seeking out and building additional community resources. For an agricultural science teacher, these community contacts are not only important to the success of the program, oftentimes they are expected by school administrators, parents, alumni and constituents. The Local Program Success for Agricultural Education (LPS) lists several benefits of developing contacts within the community including enabling your program to accomplish more, increasing the impact of your program, and building credibility with administrators, legislators and business people. Other benefits include allowing your students to make valuable contacts, exposing your students to non-- traditional agricultural industries and providing "real-world" experience to complement classroom teaching. The LPS is a valuable resource for developing a plan to find and utilize the unique resources of your community. It provides a five-step plan. 1) Identify potential partners, 2) Identify benefits of involvement for partners, 3) Present benefits to potential partner, 4) Establish a plan for involving core partners, and 5) Reward partners by recognizing their contributions and support. This is the method that has been used at Norris High School in Firth, Nebraska, for several years with a great deal of success. It takes a fair amount of planning, but the benefits to the students and the community are immeasurable. Identifying Potential Partners Agriculture teachers should take the approach of conducting a market analysis when trying to identify resources in the community. Above all else, partnerships should be based on the need of the agriculture department and should be directly tied to the curriculum that is being taught. In almost every community there will be at least one person who is considered an expert in every area of the curriculum. All too often, young agricultural science teachers think they have to be the expert in everything, when in fact; a good teacher is one who can admit that others are more knowledgeable in certain areas and root-out those people. Where is the best place to start looking? Your alumni. Unfortunately, alumni are the forgotten element of the FFA chapter. Students move away, go off to college, and tend to lose touch over time. Don't let this happen! These are the primary people who will be willing to provide money and resources for your program when they are in their 30's, 40's and 50's. They are employed by large and small companies. They are business owners, landowners and farmers. They are also the parents of many of your students. How do you reach this group? Technology is the only way to go. Norris FFA recently sent letters to many former FFA members from the past 20 years asking for support of the department's new greenhouse. While good records of these people were not available, the school's yearbooks were. Names were taken out of the yearbooks FFA page and entered into a database. Students identified as many as possible and then turned to the Internet. The site http://www. switchboard.com is a great site for locating people. Phone numbers, addresses and even e-mail addresses can be found by providing the name of the person and the general area. Accurate mailing addresses were obtained for over 80% of the chapter's former members. Identifying Benefits of Involvement for Partners Many individuals and organizations will be honored to help the local chapter without concern for their own personal benefits; however, there are several things that the FFA can contribute back to these people. …