Employment Tip: Help Grow NY Apples

Journey from Orchard to Table Lesson Plan Showcases Careers

Kelly Adams (in red, above and below) demonstrates the "Journey" and gets the kids involved at Oakdale Mall.

Thanks to the bounty of Mother Nature and the paid labor of many, many people, you can buy ripe and tasty commercially grown New York State apples in almost any grocery store in the Northeast, almost any time of the year.

Hundreds of New York fifth-graders will learn about those valuable apple-related careers through a new 30-minute lesson plan developed by New York Agriculture in the Classroom in partnership with the New York Farm Bureau Foundation for Agriculture Education. Students follow the life of a New York apple from researcher to consumer. A main activity involves them role-playing some of the many occupations involved in an apple's journey from 'orchard to table.'

New York Agriculture in the Classroom coordinator Nancy Schaff helped create the interactive inquiry-based lesson with NYAITC Director Janet Hawkes and Cornell University graduate student Kimberly Cutting. She says students -- and adults -- who pilot-tested it, had fun acting out the food system with the props. But the high jinks of donning a plant pathologist's lab coat, a produce manager's apron or a chef's distinctive hat, ultimately leads participants to an understanding of key agricultural literacy concepts. "By the time the apple reaches the end of its journey, students have described an entire food system, including many surprising apple-related careers." The lesson is aligned with both the national Food and Fiber Systems Literacy Benchmarks and the NYS Learning Standards.

A bushel basket of Orchard to Table props is available in each of New York's counties. Included in the basket is a script to help guide presenters through the lesson as well as a special teacher packet. Presenters, or, ag interpreters, will include Cornell Cooperative Extension educators, Farm Bureau, farmers, 4-H and FFA members along with others.

Nancy says gathering the props to fill over 60 metal bushel baskets was itself an education. One basket item is a computer keyboard, used to illustrate how agriculture depends on information technology. Babbage's Basement, the Ithaca Sciencenter's Computer Rescue, Restoration, and Recycling Center provided the dozens of well-worn keyboards. Nancy says Babbage's employees thought hers a most unusual request, but now, like those who have taken part in Orchard to Table activities, they, too, understand the connection between apples and old computer keyboards.

To arrange for an ag interpreter to teach the Journey from Orchard to Table lesson to a fifth-grade classroom, or, to volunteer as an ag interpreter, contact Sandie Prokop at the New York Farm Bureau Foundation for Agriculture Education: (518) 431-5633 or nysprokop@fb.org.