Directions: All of the following questions can be answered from the materials on the web site for the agricultural education. There are several ways to submit this assignment. The easiest might be to block the questions on this page, copy the text, and then paste the copied text into a word processing program. Answer the questions using the word processing program, save the file,then e-mail the saved file to me as an attachment to the e-mail message.

Assume you have been hired to teach agriculture at the new Green Hope High School (grades 9-12) in western Wake County. This is a new high school. Here are some facts about the school:

• It is on the western edge of Cary and is within 1 mile of the Preston sub-division (thousands of fancy homes starting at $250,000). This area has multiple golf courses and thousands of new homes. Many of the residents work in the high tech industry and know nothing about agriculture.
• The school is about 7 miles north of Apex (a growing area) and about 10 miles south of Chapel Hill (the home of the University of North Carolina)
• The Research Triangle Park is about 5 miles away. There are numerous biotechnology and high technology agricultural companies in the Triangle (Embrex, EPA, Avantis, BASF, etc.)
• It is about 10 miles to Lake Jordan. This is a large lake that has has lots of outdoor recreation opportunities.
• You can see tobacco fields from the school, however the area is rapidly becoming suburbanized. There are still some farms to the west of the school, but not many. Traditional farming is disappearing.

1. One week after an article appears in the Cary News announcing that Green Hope High School will have an agricultural program and that a teacher has been hired, a letter to the editor appears in the Cary News. The letter questions why the new school will have an agriculture program since farming is no longer  important in Cary . The principal asks you to prepare a response (Note: Letters to the editor in the Cary News cannot exceed 150 words).

2. Your first major task is to plan the curriculum. List the 6 courses that will be offered when the agriculture program is fully implemented along with a short justification for each course (Note: You cannot develop specialized courses. All courses must be selected from the NC Standard Course of Study. This is for a high school - not a middle school)

3. In addition to classroom instruction, what will be the other 2 major components of the agricultural education program (as identified from the DPI web site)?

4. The National Council for Agricultural Education might be able to help you plan this new program. Briefly describe one activity of the Council that is of interest to you.

5. Another source of information for agricultural educators is Kathy Schrock's agricultural education web site. Identify one of the sites listed on Kathy's web site that will support your proposed curriculum (include the URL of that site).

6.  What professional organization should you belong to as an agricultural teacher?

7. You will like to see what some other agriculture teachers are doing.  You have heard of Harvey Burniston in Tennessee. Tell what has he done? (Hint: You may find this URL to be helpful)

www.usatoday.com/life/teacher/teachburniston.htm

9. While planning your program, you decide to contact the universities in North Carolina with agricultural education programs for their advice.Which universities would you contact?

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