New Holland Partners with National Agriculture in the Classroom Organization

National Agriculture in the Classroom Organization (AITC), an organization dedicated to increasing agricultural literacy among PreK – 12th grade students and their teachers, has recently partnered with New Holland Agriculture in its mission to teach the importance of agriculture in the classroom.

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“As an advocate for agriculture, New Holland is pleased to sponsor National Agriculture in the Classroom,” said Mark Hooper, New Holland’s Senior Director of Marketing in North America. “We look forward to working with AITC to teach students the importance of agriculture and hopefully encourage them to explore careers in the industry.”

AITC and New Holland’s partnership grew out of a joint relationship with award-winning independent filmmaker Conrad Weaver of ConjoStudios, LLC. Weaver’s documentary, The Great American Wheat Harvest, was partially sponsored by New Holland, and will serve as part of AITC’s curriculum.

“When we were producing the film [The Great American Wheat Harvest], we had the initial goal of not only bringing the message to the masses, but also specifically to the classroom, and New Holland shared that vision,” said Weaver. “We hope that through this partnership, we will able to connect with students who are not already involved in agriculture.”

AITC offers agriculturally based curriculum to teachers free-of-charge. The lesson plans blend concepts and themes relating to agriculture with standard curriculum subjects including math, science, social studies, language arts, and nutrition. By encouraging teachers to embed agriculture into their classrooms, AITC cultivates an understanding and appreciation of the food and fiber system we rely on each day.

“With the help of New Holland and our sponsors, we are able to provide high-quality lesson plans to educate the masses about agriculture,” said Lisa Gaskalla, President of National Agriculture in the Classroom Organization. “Right now we are focusing heavily on career lesson plans that educate high school students about career possibilities in agriculture. We hope to see more students graduating with an interest in agriculture”

AITC hopes to make finding and using these lessons even easier for teachers with thelaunch of its online matrix, a resource that will allow teachers to search agriculturally based lesson plans by grade level and download them free-of-charge. The matrix officially launched at the 2015 National AITC Conference on June 16-20. A brief video was shown at the conference.