Morrison High School follows growing ag program trend, adds teacher, greenhouse

Sep. 21—MORRISON — Agriculture programs are growing in Dixon and Sterling high schools, and Morrison High School is keeping up with it by adding an additional agriculture teacher to its staff and overseeing the construction of a greenhouse on its campus.

Dixon High School introduced three agriculture classes into its curriculum at the start of the school year, which is something it hasn't offered since 1986. Meanwhile, Sterling High School welcomed an additional agriculture teacher to its staff and secured an extra plot of farmland for its students to use as a lab.

The two school districts' growing attention to ag offerings was spurred by two things — the hands-on nature of ag programs and the lessons students can directly apply to their own lives, the Sterling and Dixon ag teachers said. But at Morrison, its teachers pointed to another reason: the availability of qualified teachers.

In September 2017, MHS rechartered its agriculture program, according to ilaged.org , but it was a part of the FFA's national chapter before that.

The chapter was at least active sometime during the late 1940s. Morrison's new agriculture teacher, Johnathon Hendricks, said they found an FFA plaque dated either 1947 or 1948.

"I know at one point they went away from agriculture and just did industrial arts and industrial technology," Tonia Prombo, Morrison's second agriculture teacher, said in an interview.

That's because it used to be a lot harder for districts to find teachers who were qualified to teach agriculture, but there were plenty of teachers qualified to teach industrial classes. Now, that trend has flipped. There are plenty of ag teachers but not a lot of industrial teachers, Hendricks said.

Students still are being offered industrial classes, but "since agriculture is so diversified, a lot of schools are going to hire ag teachers to do both," Prombo said. She referenced Erie High School as an example. Its industrial technology teacher retired, and the school's administration wasn't able to find a new industrial teacher, so they hired an ag teacher who can teach classes such as agricultural technology.

At MHS, Hendricks has taken the lead on the business and technical side of agriculture. He teaches intro to agriculture, basic ag mechanics, ag mechanics, ag construction, ag sales, ag business and an agriculture internship class.

Prombo is on the science side of agriculture, teaching horticulture, natural resources and ag biology. She's also taken on responsibility of the greenhouse since it mostly will be used by the students in her classes, and particularly her horticulture class.

Last fall, Morrison's FFA alumni got the idea for a greenhouse at the high school and began asking to see whether the district would be interested. Prombo sent out a survey to teachers in the district, and several responded saying they were interested, but the school's previous ag teacher already had a full plate and didn't think they could take on anymore responsibility, Prombo said.

So the school's administration approached Prombo, who was teaching science at the time, to see if she would be interested. Since she already was certified in agriculture, Prombo said "absolutely."

Throughout the past year, the district and FFA alumni have been fundraising for the greenhouse. The alumni are paying for the building itself, but the district will fund everything that will go inside the greenhouse. So far, they've also received a couple of grants, including one from the Sauk Valley Area Chamber of Commerce and one from the Morrison Education Foundation, Prombo said.

The alumni — along with several other groups of volunteers — started construction of the building in late June, she said. Now, in September, it's almost finished.

All that's left is to "wait for the fire safety to come in and get the fans hooked up." After that, they'll be able to get the building inspected, and then students will be able to start using it. It's expected to be completed in November or December, Prombo said.

Once it's finished, the horticulture students will help get items ready to go into the greenhouse.

"The hope is that by the end of the semester we'll have that all done, so we'll be able to go into [the] second semester being able to prep for the plant cell that we'll do in the spring," Prombo said.

The students also still are deciding what they want to do for landscaping around the greenhouse, which is temporarily filled in with mulch. An idea Prombo had was to do a little bit of landscaping at a time over the next few years so that different classes can do different parts of it.

For now, Hendricks' ag construction class is working on building a picnic table and some lawn chairs for the area around it.

Like the greenhouse, the hope is that the ag program will continue to grow, Prombo said.

One good sign she's noticed is increased student involvement in the FFA, particularly from freshman and sophomore students, "which is really exciting because then that means there's potential for our program to continue to grow even more by having those younger students that are excited and wanting to participate," she said.

In Illinois, all students in agriculture classes are automatically part of FFA, although it's up to them how much they choose to participate. This year, Hendricks and Prombo decided to make participation a part of their grade and require students to go to at least one FFA event.

"I think some of the kids that have not been involved, maybe in the upper grades, kind of saw that as like, 'Oh, you're punishing us' or something. But when they go to these activities, we truly believe that they're going to enjoy themselves. And so far, that's what they are finding," Prombo said.

In FFA, they started doing forestry for the first time. Prombo had seven kids at the meeting who wanted to learn and participate in forestry, which "is great. I love seeing that," she said.

Over the next couple of years, Prombo hopes to introduce more agriculture classes. A lot of the classes that Hendricks teaches — such as ag business and ag sales — are only a semester long. Having a class that's only one semester "is nice because sometimes the kids, they can get bored with the same subject matter," Prombo said.

Another benefit is that sometimes students' schedules will fill up quickly, and they only have one opening during the first or second semester. In the science department, there's not a lot of options for semester-long courses. Having those available to students provides more flexibility for them, especially if they're involved in other activities, she said.

Another one of their goals is to eventually start introducing ag education to middle school and elementary students "to be able to kind of introduce them more to those agricultural things," Prombo said.

The district's new counselor is doing some training to learn more about ag education and what those classes offer to kids. Prombo said that is huge because in the past ag wasn't always promoted at the middle school level.

"I think that's going to be a huge asset, to have somebody in the counseling position that's going to advocate for the program," she said.

A lot of kids miss out and don't try any of the ag classes because they think, "Oh, that's just for farmers," she said.

"They don't realize how diverse, especially agriculture, is," Prombo said.