Who needs pesticide credits?

A need identified for the community was and will continue to be pesticide education courses for the attainment of both core and category credits. Another item identified at Penn Manor was the need for both community members and students of the community to earn their private pesticide applicators licenses.

 With this it was decided to transform the community-based unit of instruction both into a resource to utilize and enhance the community but also to aid the Ag Science 3 students, as I tasked them with engaging with the community and preparing to earn their private applicators license.

 

As we went through our IPM and pesticide unit we began contacting local persons within the community and sending out letters to invite the community to our pesticide meeting. The intent was that the students would secure the participants and myself along with the help of another Ag teacher in the department would secure the speakers for the night. We reached out to Penn State Extension, contacts that Mr. Hess had made in the past. They were more than willing to come and support the Agriculture Department, its students, and the community.

     As the meeting date drew closer I identified which students from my class would be able to attend the meeting night. About half of my class, 10 students, would be in attendance. From this point we began identifying tasks for them to complete and talking with the entire class about how we engage the community and showcase the Agriculture program and ourselves.

         This sparked many discussions about how many people typically attended these meetings, and why the number was so high, what was the secret.

 Unfortunately the day of our meeting we had an ice storm and had to cancel so all of the students community engagement and hard work was never put into action. I contacted the speakers who were more than willing to reschedule but did not have any free dates until late April, which would not help the community that needed their credits before the end of March to keep their licenses in date. As we canceled our meeting, within the next few days the phone calls from community members began coming in and the students quickly identified a need for a meeting.

As we redirected this idea due to the timeline, we discovered that the community did not know where to go to find other meeting locations. With this the students spent the next few days researching other meeting locations and how to access them. To aid the community the class designed flyers to hang around the community that went through the process of checking credit numbers and finding meeting locations for all applicators licenses. A group of students then traveled around the community to hang these flyers in pre-identified locations.

     The next step in our unit was preparing for and taking the private applicators exam. We not only offered this exam to our students but to the community, unfortunately no community member showed up the day of the exam, but it was offered.

    To prepare for the private applicators exam I brought in Kelly Lowery from the Penn State Extension to review with the students and make sure they were prepared for the applicators exam. I also worked with Katie Holden , a local Extension Agent to come in and administer the private applicators exam.

As the unit wrapped up we discussed the events that had taken place and identified areas in which we could improve the process and further engage with the community.

        Overall looking back on the unit I wished that I would have been able to engage the community even further with this unit. The key is most certainly planning far enough ahead which was a challenge not being in the community until January.