District Administrators Corner

by Loren Glasbrenner,  River Valley School District Administrator  Agriculture is everywhere.  It is in the food we serve and eat, the clothes we wear, and the homes we live in.  It cannot be categorized into John Deere tractors and Carhartt jackets.  The River Valley School District is incredibly proud to have an outstanding program in ag education which focuses on agricultural literacy for our district.  Literacy in agriculture is defined as the  ability to understand and communicate the source and value of agriculture as it affects our quality of life (https://www.agliteracy.org/research).  And, if you live in or near Lone Rock, Arena, Plain, or Spring Green, agriculture does improve your quality of life. River Valley High School and River Valley Middle School offer elective courses to keep kids interested and help build background for career and college readiness.  The specific agricultural courses that are available for our students include middle school Agriculture Exploratory, Agribusiness, Animal Health & Nutrition, Aquaculture, Food Science, Plant Science, Horticulture, Large Animal Science, Small Animal Science, and Youth Apprenticeship in Agriculture.  It is a great list to have and is a busy department. On Friday, September 24, our school will be celebrating agriculture with our annual River Valley School Fair.  This year all students have gained extra flexibility to be an exhibitor or a viewer of all the great things our school fair offers—it is a day off from school!  The school fair tradition has also been expanded to include new topics for our youngest learners.  Teachers in grades PreK through Grade 4 are all focusing on a specific grade level theme of agriculture in our classrooms to add to the celebration. In Pre-Kindergarten, our staff are utilizing the book, Big Red Barn by Margaret Wise Brown, to start our littlest learners with great farm characters and help us remember the fun of seeing the “big red barn in the great green field.”  And, each child will get the opportunity to create a farm character (sheep, cow, pig, or horse).  In Kindergarten, our teachers are focusing on apples in agriculture.  Southwestern Wisconsin is home to many orchards with rich history surrounding immigration and early families planting apples brought from Europe.  Early August brings many apple varieties to our families and will spark interest in our students. Our FFA team is bringing agriculture to life for Grade 1.  A heifer from Bear Valley will help to teach students about the life cycle of a cow and where milk is produced.  Connections can then be made by the students to other products that are produced from milk.  In Grade 2, students are focusing on poultry—specifically chickens.  Not only will the students learn about the different kinds of poultry, but they will also learn about the vast array of colors in the feathers of a rooster.  Our Grade 3 team is diving into the world of forestry.  A nonfiction selection about the life cycle of trees will help students make connections to forestry which is a large agricultural and historical application in Wisconsin.  Lastly, Grade 4 students are getting dirty…literally.  Soil and the diverse microorganisms in healthy soil will be studied.  Each of these topics will come alive during our agriculture week at school.  Creative connections will be made from topics, read in books, created in art, and then exhibited at the River Valley School Fair with the help of our new elementary art teacher, Megan Quigley.  Every parent of every elementary kid will be able to find a personal connection on September 24 to agriculture.  Stop by, enjoy the fair, and notice how deeply invested our community is to the rich traditions of agriculture in Wisconsin.