GROWTH POTENTIAL

MAT-SU — It was the teachers’ turn to learn this week, with a group of area educators taking not only to the classroom, but the farm fields and the chicken coop.

It wasn’t the traditional way to earn professional development credits — or just increase a knowledge base — but teachers who completed the fourth annual Alaska Agriculture in the Classroom Educator Institute said they learned a lot about local agriculture and its impact on their lives and those of their students.

Linda Luster, who begins her 30th year of teaching when students return to Finger Lake Elementary in little more than a week, said the course gave her new insights into an old industry.

“There’s a lot of stuff you can use once you know how to teach it,” Luster said. “It’s sort of sad more teachers aren’t interested in agriculture.”

Charlene Christensen of Palmer, retired from Anchorage School District and an active substitute teacher in Mat-Su, said she stresses agriculture is her “culture.”

“Without my culture, you don’t have any food to eat, a roof over your head or clothes to wear,” Christensen said.

Special speakers from farm agencies, University of Alaska Fairbanks’ Matanuska Experiment Station, Alaska Plant Materials Center and others augmented the tours, which included vegetable, yak, poultry and dairy farms, and Matanuska Creamery. The group also ate lunch with Alaska Division of Agriculture Director Franci Havemeister at her home; another day, they picked their own lunch at Pyrah’s Pioneer Peak U-Pick farm.

For Una Kernodle of Wasilla, who works as an ASD curriculum specialist, most striking was the dedication of the area’s farmers.

“The incredible, great farmers we have in the Valley — the difference they try to make,” Kernodle said. “They don’t get enough credit.”

Luster said the opportunity to walk down a farm road, eating celery and peas she’d just picked, while connecting with other area teachers, was worth losing three of her last days of summer.

“We were all buddies by the end of it,” Luster said. “It will be a great memory of three days well spent of my summer vacation.”

The course was sponsored by the Alaska Farm Bureau and its Mat-Su Chapter, the Palmer Soil and Water Conservation District and Matanuska Telephone Association. Alaska AITC (agclassroom.org/ak) is a 501c3 program of the Alaska Farm Bureau.