ANCW: Taking Beef to the Classroom

ANCW Taking Beef to the Classroom

by Kasey Miller, API associate editor

DENVER, Colo. (July 25, 2012) — Young people will be tomorrow’s consumers and beef producers, and the American National CattleWomen (ANCW) Education Curriculum Committee is working to increase beef’s presence in the classroom.

Committee co-chair Rebecca Been said a stronger cattlewoman presence is needed in the national Agriculture in the Classroom program. Much of the current curriculum is centered on garden education. More effort needs to be made to educate school children about production agriculture.

“They need enough industry people to link the gardening curriculum back to production agriculture,” she said.

Suzanne Menges, committee chairwoman, says the speaking contest is good preparation for the National Beef Ambassador Program because the students already have a presentation about the beef industry and speaking skills.

Project Food, Land and People (FLP), a widely used program for elementary and secondary students to learn about agriculture, is developing curriculum to educate students about animal agriculture. The goal is to combat the misconceptions the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and the general media broadcast. The lessons will focus on six areas: food safety, animal safety, genetics and animal welfare, nutrition and the importance of protein, animal and ruminant digestion, and advertising and the misconceptions of animal agriculture.

FLP asked ANCW for input on common misconceptions so it could start developing curriculum and for advice on experts to review the curriculum once it is developed for the teacher pilot program for 2013.

Another project is the creation of a beef production book geared toward young students. Been met with the authors of the project and was asked to provide a nationwide view of cattle production. It is hoped that the books will be out in January.

ANCW is producing toolkits as an online resource for cattlewomen for projects to promote the beef industry, “so as not to reinvent the wheel,” explained Been. The committee was charged to create two toolkits before the year ends. The first will be a reading-in-the-classroom toolkit.

The idea is that, to most cattlewomen, reading to a class is less intimidating than presenting for a set period of time. The toolkit would provide a sample letter to teachers, a book list, prop ideas, costs, materials needed, discussion questions and also a discussion geared for teachers if a cattlewoman can’t present the information.

“These will help ensure success, because when a cattlewoman has a better first experience, she’s more likely to continue presenting to classrooms,” Been added.

The second toolkit, presented by co-chair Barbara Jacques, was an Earth Day toolkit. It centered on the book Amazing Grazing by Cris Peterson and ruminant activities provided by the Cattlemen’s Beef Board. There is a Cow Chow video and interactive quiz that goes along with the book. With the cost of mailing materials, she said these supplemental materials have the potential to be emailed, making it easier and more cost-effective to reach teachers.

Until the toolkit is finished and posted at www.ancw.org, Jacques said that she can email it to members. The book is available on Amazon.com for less than $10, and the Cow Chow video is available at www.ExploreBeef.org/CowChow.

Author Karen Kelling presented her book The Comanchero’s Grave, a mystery adventure novel for young girls with an underlying message of how hard the death tax makes passing on a family ranch. At the 2013 winter meeting in February in Tampa, Fla., ANCW plans to have a agricultural book boutique that can “expose books written by those from the inside” to the projected 6,000 trade show attendees, Kelling explained.

To read other summaries from this conference, click here.