Sustaining Our Agricultural Resources (SOAR)

The goal of this project is to develop a sustainable model for providing professional development and continuing education activities for secondary agriscience education teachers to address conceptually challenging areas of food, agriculture, natural resources, and human sciences education (FANH). The objectives of Sustaining Our Agricultural Resources (SOAR) through Targeted Professional Development (SOAR-TPD) include providing immersive learning experiences for secondary agriscience teachers through targeted professional development and continuing education activities. Specifically SOAR-TPD will result in:

1. creating a sustainable professional development and continuing education program for agriscience education teachers;
2. providing targeted training related to FANH;
3. addressing identified critical professional development needs;
4. enhancing agriscience educators pedagogical skills in identifying students skill gaps and instructing students in identified areas; and
5. creating strong partnerships through collaboration with Alabama Department of Education, industry partners, secondary school administrators, secondary agriscience educators, and university faculty.

As the program evolves, new content areas including animal sciences, agriculture technology, aquaculture, computerized record books, construction technology, food processing, natural resource, and environmental soil science, supervised agricultural experience opportunities, and unmanned aerial vehicles will be available.

As the content of agriculture classrooms evolves, the need for traditional agriculture instruction is still a vital component for students to develop a fundamental knowledge of the field. Although many programs have moved from a traditional curriculum to a non-traditional curriculum,  teachers feel a strong connection to the foundational content.