Project Overview
Commodities
- Additional Plants: native plants, ornamentals
Practices
- Crop Production: fertilizers, greenhouses, water management
- Education and Training: youth education
- Sustainable Communities: employment opportunities, urban/rural integration
Proposal abstract:
In June 2023, PCA staff attending the California Agricultural Teachers Association (CATA) uncovered a pressing need: educators sought compelling horticulture materials for fostering environmental stewardship. This revelation underscores the PCA's mission to bridge this educational gap, providing engaging, bilingual resources that focus heavily on sustainable practices, aligning with California's future agricultural landscape.
The PCA, in collaboration with the California Foundation for Agriculture in the Classroom (CFAITC), proposes to develop a horticulture curriculum unit and train high school agriculture teachers to use the curriculum to incorporate sustainable principals into their horticulture programs. Existing study materials from the California Certified Nursery Professional (CCN Pro) program will be used as the foundation for developing a curriculum framework. The curriculum will be created through the collaboration of high school educators with input and feedback from stakeholders in the nursery industry. The materials will also be translated into Spanish to support the 45,000 California agriculture students that are Hispanic/Latino.
Once the curriculum is developed, CFAITC will promote the unit to their extensive network of more than 12,000 educators and numerous agriculture, environmental, and education organizations throughout the state. PCA and CFAITC will conduct a curriculum-based training webinar and facilitate regional and statewide in-person workshops to equip teachers to use the curriculum with confidence in their classrooms.
Project objectives from proposal:
The objectives of this project are to 1) improve agriculture teachers’ competency in training horticulture students in sustainable principles and practices; 2) increase teachers’ confidence in delivering the related curriculum; and 3) enhance teachers' access to sustainability-integrated horticulture materials.
We'll gauge these objectives through a comprehensive pre- and post-event Likert scale survey, ensuring a data-driven approach to measure our impact and effectiveness. Additionally, follow-up interviews will help the project collaborators gather qualitative data and determine additional outcomes of the project.