Global Learning in Agriculture

This blog post is coming to you from State College, Pennsylvania home of Penn State University. I am in town as part of the Global Learning in Agriculture Conference hosted by Global Teach Ag! This is an online conference happening Friday afternoon, but leading up to the capstone conference we have had weekly round table discussions and on-demand presentations revolving around bringing global agriculture to classrooms, utilizing technology, global agriculture in a domestic setting, and reaching diverse learners. As the week has gone on we have come across some interesting trends and points that educators, extension personnel, and agriculture professionals have discussed. I want to share some of these intriguing questions below and encourage the conversations to continue in your classrooms, coffee shops, and communities around the world. In fact you can even join the conference discussion on Twitter utilizing the hashtag #GLAG18!

Discussion Points

• Is it important to learn about agriculture at a global level? Explain your responses.
• Recently in our society and in countries around the world the word "agriculture" has picked up a bad stigma. Dr. Daniel Foster made the following statement, "Often, when talking to high school students, I ask them if they are interested in Ag and they say no. When I ask them if they want to work in food, with fiber, or to help solve natural resource issues...they say YES." Think about that for a minute. How have we gotten to this point? What can be done to overcome this?
• Tonight we had a great discussion about reaching and working with diverse learners and populations. It was noted time and time again that before anything trust must be established. What do you feel is the best way to gain trust with diverse learners/populations and why is this so important?