Lance Omeje

Being born and raised on a farm, I naturally had good instincts about where the food I ate came from. But when I asked my 36 students where their food came from, I was flabbergasted by their response, "fast food restaurants." On another occasion, my sixth grade colleague wandered into the school garden where I was hard at work, and when she saw an Italian yellow squash she proclaimed, "So, that is how the bananas grow!" That marked the beginning of my conquest to integrate agriculture into the classroom.

I first learned about Ag in the Classroom when I attended the Ag Symposium sponsored by the Fresno Farm Bureau, during the summer of 1996. I had just received my Multiple Subject Teaching Certification by the State of California. Soon thereafter, I was hired by Fresno Unified School District. I was strategically placed at Turner Elementary, which had an existing school garden. However, the garden was on the verge of being dismantled because it was no longer serving the needs of the children and the community. When I was hired, I taught multiple subjects, namely math, science, language arts, social studies, and writing in a fourth/fifth grade combination class.

One particular student of mine that I believe benefited from agriculture education immigrated from Laos. During the first quarter of school, she seemed very bashful, and could hardly speak a word of English. She was leveled as "PP," meaning pre-production. I used to read aloud to the students in the garden. But one day the student, along with two other girls, came within the proximity of my desk. She was holding a tomato plant in a brown plastic container. At first she bashfully made eye contact with me, then smiled, and murmured something in her language to her friends. "Mr. O," she said, "Is it true that if you read to the plants they will grow better?" "Yes!" I responded. Since then she kept the plant on her desk and read to it daily. At first she read softly, but when the plant grew bigger she started to read louder and louder. After one month we transplanted the plant into her favorite part of the school garden, where she continued to read aloud until harvest time. By reading to the plant, she became popular among her peers and was able to gain confidence in her reading. A year later, she reassessed as "EP" or early-production, and by the time she completed fifth grade she classified as "AV" or advanced, meaning she spoke English almost fluently.

I am proud of how I have impacted many youngsters and adults by incorporating agriculture in the classroom. I help students understand the cause and effect of interrelationships among humans and their environment and help promote healthy eating habits and expose the limitless job opportunities that are associated with agriculture.

Finally, I cannot express enough in words how much I appreciate the recognitions by CFAITC, the numerous opportunities to travel around the country, and to network nationally and internationally with other agricultural educators. It is obvious that the students are the future leaders and food producers of the nation and the world at large.

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