Ag Education and CTE, with Eric Sawatzke

In this episode of Unpacking Education, we dive into the powerful world of agricultural education and career and technical education (CTE), with award-winning ag teacher Eric Sawatzke. Eric shares how hands-on learning and real-world applications—like hydroponic farming, meat processing labs, and FFA leadership—are transforming student engagement and preparing learners for meaningful careers.

This episode is packed with inspiring stories and practical tips about a wide range of topics, from rural classrooms to national grants. Whether you're new to CTE or looking to expand your school's opportunities, Eric's insights offer a compelling look at how education can open doors and build pathways to success beyond the traditional college track. Visit AVID Open Access to learn more.

Transcript

Eric Sawatzke 0:00
AG education and career tech ed have always been a standard bearer of careers that are always going to be necessary. We were in an era where the baby boomers really took on all the vocational careers and were in the middle of their careers in the 90s and 2000s, and so we didn't have a high demand for electricians or ag engineers or agronomists or small engine mechanics. Now we're on a major upheaval of trying to figure out how to fill that void. The demand is unbelievable.

Paul Beckermann 0:31
The topic for today's podcast is ag education and CTE with Eric Sawatzke. Unpacking Education is brought to you by AVID. AVID believes in seeing the potential of every student. To learn more about AVID, visit their website at avid.org.

Rena Clark 0:49
Welcome to Unpacking Education, the podcast where we explore current issues and best practices in education.

Rena Clark 0:59
I'm Rena Clark.

Paul Beckermann 1:00
I'm Paul Beckermann.

Winston Benjamin 1:02
And I'm Winston Benjamin. We are educators, and we're here to share insights and actionable strategies.

Transition Music with Rena's Children 1:10
Education is our passport to the future.

Paul Beckermann 1:14
Our quote for today is from our guest, Eric Sawatzke. Eric says, "I love promoting a profession that connects with students in the most relevant way possible."

Paul Beckermann 1:26
All right, Rena, Winston, what do you got with our quote today?

Winston Benjamin 1:30
I'll jump in. I think the part that is really connecting with me is "the most relevant way possible." Like, for the last couple of years, I've been hearing a lot of parents and people say, "Oh, that's not the way I did it when I was a kid." And it's like, yeah, I get it. Our system needs to evolve and adapt with the actual—what our students are asking for from us right now. So yes, we were able to meet their needs. And as we continue, we continue to try to meet the needs of our students in the best way possible. And it gives me hope to know that we're going to always adapt and evolve to meet who's in front of us and help them to get to the next stages in their life. So I agree. I love that about the profession.

Paul Beckermann 2:12
All right, very good. Rena, how about you?

Rena Clark 2:14
I guess to add on to that, it's not just relevant in the way that we might be thinking of, like, time and culture, but also relevant in maybe even community and space. And as we maybe discuss today, like, what is relevant for community? What is relevant for a culture? So what are the ways that school and community can intertwine and support each other together so they're not separate, but really working together? So I'm excited to talk about, you know, CTE and career pathways and all the different pathways that we have for students.

Paul Beckermann 2:53
For sure. So we're excited to welcome Eric Sawatzke to the podcast. Eric is an agricultural education instructor at West Central Area School in Minnesota. Hey, welcome, Eric.

Eric Sawatzke 3:05
Thanks for having me.

Paul Beckermann 3:06
It's good to see you. Yeah, fun fact: Eric and I taught together, like, what do we think, maybe 10 years ago?

Eric Sawatzke 3:12
Something like that.

Paul Beckermann 3:12
Yeah. All right, it's good to see you again. You want to tell our audience a little bit about yourself and describe your educational journey, maybe a little bit about what drew you to ag ed?

Eric Sawatzke 3:22
Yeah, sure. So I grew up in central Minnesota, a little town called Waverly. Originally, when I was growing up, there was about 300 people in our town, and I was just outside of town on a dairy farm. We milked a whopping 90 cows. And so we were a part of that era where it was time—where there was something called the farm crisis in the 80s—and a lot of farms had to sell. And my family, unfortunately, had to be one of those. So as I was growing up, 12, 13 years old, and seeing our cows leave and selling some land, I knew that there wasn't a farm to go back to. And that was really important to me—was agriculture in general, just because that was everything I knew.

And so just a little bit after that, I entered high school, and I walked into my first agriculture class as a ninth grader, not knowing really much about what ag education was or FFA. But I got really excited really early on. And so it was something that just kind of clicked right out of the gate. And boy, within about nine months, I had already thought, "Man, I could just do that. I could be an ag teacher and do this thing. I've got ag, and I enjoy school." And so it's a combination that I think I can do. And throughout the rest of my high school career, everybody said, "Well, you'll probably change your mind. You're a ninth grader—you're going to change your mind." And I never did.

And then I started classes in college, and everybody said, "Well, maybe you'll change your mind." And even my ag teacher said, "You know, maybe you want to do something—you've got a lot of skills, and you can do something more advanced and something that might pay better." And I just never changed my mind. And then I went on for a master's degree and got a master's in ag education. And it's just—this is something that clicks for me. Every day I wake up, I'm excited, and it's been that way for going on 20 years now.

Paul Beckermann 5:03
That's awesome. And I will just say for our listeners, Eric is an exceptional teacher, and we are so grateful that he stayed in education.

Winston Benjamin 5:12
Absolutely.

Rena Clark 5:14
Well, you talk about agriculture, and we know ag is part—well, maybe our listeners don't know—but ag is part of CTE, so career technical education. So why do you think agriculture and CTE, career technical education, are so important, especially for our students now?

Eric Sawatzke 5:37
Yeah. So when I say that I had an ag teacher trying to talk me out of it a little bit, it's because there was an era there when I graduated high school. It was a "college for all" mentality. It was everybody needs to go on to a four-year post-secondary career. And everybody knew you had to have a great resume. You were going to be in a stack that they were going to look at the resumes and break it down based on the quality of the resume. And there was going to be an intense interview process, and you better have all the credentials in the world, whether or not the credentials met the job. There's even some funny commercials out there these days where people have a degree in something, and they're trying to look for a job, but that something they have a degree in doesn't really match the careers that are out there today.

And so ag education and career tech ed have always been a standard bearer of careers that are always going to be necessary. And they just weren't—we were in an era where the baby boomers really took on all the vocational careers and were in the middle of their careers in the 90s and 2000s. And so we didn't have a high demand for electricians or ag engineers or agronomists or small engine mechanics. Now we're on a major upheaval of trying to figure out how to fill that void. Just like almost every other career path, the demand is unbelievable.

And so career and technical education as a whole—who is going to be the one that's going to fix your home when something goes down? Who's going to be the one that's going to grow your food, inspect your food, prepare your food, take care of you in the healthcare fields? All of those direct, hands-on kind of pathways kind of got a little bit of a back seat for about 20 years there. And now we're close to the front seat. It's pretty incredible to see the shift back to that high demand for careers.

And so it doesn't matter if it's agriculture, doesn't matter if it's trade and industry, family consumer sciences, healthcare fields—we have incredible demand right now. People are looking for folks to fill those voids. And a lot of students are looking at it and saying, "I could fill that void without a very deep student debt load." And so we can jump you right into a career. We can send you to a two-year program or some other certificate program, get a little extra right after high school, and be out there and being paid at or above a bachelor's degree or master's degree without the student debt load.

Winston Benjamin 8:00
I love that. As a vocational high school graduate myself, I am really digging that this is the conversation we're having, right? So one of the questions that I have is: Not all students will go on to a career in agriculture, because if you told me that was my gig as a New Yorker, I'm like, "Nah." But what can these students gain from an agriculture education or CTE education, as you just mentioned, right? You gave a couple of positives in your last answer, but what other things could students gain from taking a course in agriculture or the CTE realm?

Eric Sawatzke 8:40
Well, I think first and foremost is the point of giving everybody a broad education is to try everything out. You know, we don't really question, "Why do we put every kid through a music program?" Because we want them to be engaged in it and see if it's for them, right? And so, you know, we should get everybody an experience in healthcare fields and family consumer science and agriculture, just so they get a chance to taste it before they go off on their own and make a decision of where they're going for their career.

The next step is, in the agriculture-specific side, we all eat, and we all need a home, and we all need fuel. And agriculture provides so much of that. And, you know, so just understanding that—you know, most of our citizens of the United States are coming up on two or three or even four generations removed from the family farm. And so how do you know where your food comes from? And how do you trust it? And all of us in agriculture know how we're producing our food, but we want everybody else to know that too. And so just that literacy standpoint—agricultural literacy—can be a key to getting students interested too and having an educated consumer base.

And so the other thing is, what if they got excited about it, and what if they got into a career path they never thought they would? That's what a majority of my students that got into careers in ag say: "I wasn't an ag kid. I never thought of myself as someone that would enjoy ag. And I took an ag class with you and got excited, and now here I am in a career in the agriculture field." That's a vast, vast majority of them—didn't plan on a career in ag, and they ended up there because they found it interesting.

But if you don't—what if you end up working in law, or what if you end up—let's say in politics—and you end up setting, let's say, something arbitrary like the weight limits on gravel roads? But you don't know anything about what it takes for a piece of farm equipment to do the job that it does during the spring planting season and the impact you're going to have on that farm by putting a restriction on them. Everybody plays a role in how we're able to produce our food and our food system. And so the more educated we can be, the better.

If I'm going to go and ask for a farm loan, sometimes I'm asking for some pretty big chunks of change that I can't pay for immediately. But there's a process where I'm going to bring an income later and pay it off. If my banker doesn't understand how agricultural finance works, they're not going to give me that loan. A general loan is not the same as an ag operating loan. And so I need bankers to know that too.

So it's just—you don't know what career paths you're going to be in. You are still going to be a consumer. I don't see why everybody wouldn't at least get a little bit of a taste of ag education to understand all of that.

Rena Clark 11:11
Can I just—can you give us an example, like, what an ag class might be called, what it might include, like, just for those people that—maybe you keep saying "ag class," but we don't really know what that is?

Eric Sawatzke 11:22
And it really is dependent regionally. You know, there's some easy, broad-spectrum things. I might say I teach an animal science class, but then you break that down. And if Winston, if you're in New York, I know that John Bowne High School would be an example in downtown New York that has an ag program, and they're teaching reptile and amphibian healthcare. And so if you have somebody that wants to be a small animal veterinarian in the metropolitan area and learn about how to care for reptiles, you might have an ag class for that.

But I'm going to teach a class on how to feed ruminant animals, meaning cows, and how to feed pigs and how to feed horses. Or I might teach a plant science class. When I taught with Paul, I taught a lot about landscaping and floral design. We were close to the Twin Cities metro area, so that was an interest area. We didn't have as many ag kids there. I moved out here—the average farm size in Minnesota is 300 acres. The average farm in my district is nearly 5,000 acres. So my kids are driving very big, very expensive farm equipment, and we've got to teach them the plant science of large-scale crop production. So I changed my plant science class. But it could be landscaping, floral design, or a crop production class like that. But I could teach a wildlife course, small engines, maybe welding, a lot of environmental management-type courses too. So that's kind of a little bit of the spectrum of what we'd be talking about.

Rena Clark 12:45
Thanks.

Paul Beckermann 12:46
I just love that wide variety of opportunities that you're giving kids. In AVID, we call that opportunity knowledge, and we need to give kids that knowledge of the opportunities that are out there for them. Otherwise, how do they ever know that that's not even a door that they can open or walk through? So I think that's fantastic.

Let's zoom into your classroom just a little bit. So if there's a student in your classroom, can you describe maybe a learning experience, a favorite learning experience, or something that impacts kids? What does that look like or feel like in your classroom?

Eric Sawatzke 13:18
Well, you know, luckily, I've been able to be in a school district that's changed the way they look at ag education and invested in it significantly. So we are extremely hands-on right now. I would say 85 to 90% of our coursework is hands-on—a lot of that kind of formative assessment. So a kid is going to walk into, let's say, my plant science class again, and we're going to be in the greenhouse. And so we have a class greenhouse, and we might have some hydroponic systems where that student has to adapt and learn the ratios of hydroponic fertilizer and actually make it work properly so that we get a good product out of that system.

So I've got a senior that's graduating next week, and he took that on all four years. He came from the Twin Cities and moved out here, and he is now going into an agriculture career in farming, actually, in large-scale production. But right now he was running our system and learned that in plant science. And then one night he was at the school late—late night after a school event. I wasn't there. I was at home. And he thought, "I better check on our hydroponic system. I know Mr. Sawatzke and the FFA kids really want that to work well."

So he checked it, and the pump had run all the water out of the tank, completely dry on a Friday night. He filled the tank, tested the pH of it, adjusted that, tested what's called the electric conductivity, which measures the amount of fertilizer, figured out it was off, and changed that. And he left the school at around 12:30 in the morning. And then he told me on Monday. And I said, "Why'd you wait till Monday?" He goes, "You didn't need to be bothered. You knew that I would take care of it if it was ever a problem, and I took care of it. And that's just what I do."

And then, so in the end, what's fun about our stuff that we grow here is everything we're doing right now—all of our food we're growing, we harvest every week, usually about 70 heads of lettuce out of our NFT. And then the kids deliver it to the food shelf every single head. And so we are full-circle kind of a place. We're trying to teach you how to grow it, what it is that you have to do to make sure that it grows properly. If there's problems, how to harvest it safely, and then we get to see it go directly to the best possible beneficiary in our community directly.

Rena Clark 15:34
I could have used maybe your advice as I was planning my garden this weekend.

Rena Clark 15:38
But that's amazing. I love that full circle, which I think that leads into this next question, because you were one of 25 educators worldwide—not state, not nationally, but worldwide—selected to participate in the Global Guides program that focused on food security. And we would just love to hear about what that experience was like and what did you learn from that experience. What a cool opportunity.

Eric Sawatzke 16:05
Yeah, sure was. You know, and this is another reason why I try to work with students, because I've benefited from networks massively, and so I want students to understand how to network and how to not just hear about going to a networking event—I feel like that's too formal—but to reach out and find the people that are like-minded, but also finding different pathways than you are at doing some of the same—hitting some of those same goals.

So in that light, I did get selected because of actually some similar concepts that some professors at Penn State had that I believed in, and that's working on food security across the world. And so what they've done is they've created this Global Teach Ag Network, and one of the programs was this Global Guides. And they would select 25 instructors each year, and we get the opportunity to work on food security within education. So how do we take what we do in our classroom and make it a bigger deal in our community and in our classroom and so on and so forth?

And it's a very wide array. I had teachers that were art teachers in my cohort, teachers that were collegiate professors, some other ag teachers, science teachers. And so it's bringing all aspects together. We did a lot during that year of poetry about food insecurity. I never thought as an ag teacher we'd be doing it. We were using, you know, language as a way to break through some of that conversation about how do we stabilize our food systems?

And so that year, we were told to force ourselves to think big about a project we want to do about global food security. I believe part of why I was selected was the instructors there knew that I was working on a project where a local Lions Club was involved in a Lions International grant to reduce local hunger issues, or reduce local hunger. And so we got a grant, and then we got a bunch of local supporters to help us build a greenhouse to teach plant science with the idea of donating the product to the food shelf. And they knew about that, and so they thought that would be a great project to work within Global Guides. And I did too.

And so we created some of the final steps for us to be able to guarantee that the food would continue for years on. And then, ironically, that group also has ties to some bigger-picture goal connections with some funds. And so I was able to access some state funding to keep growing that project and to advance some other projects that we're doing at our school.

The other thing that we did was we were part of what was called the World Food Prize. And so we got to go down to Iowa. For those that don't know, a big name in the ag world is Norman Borlaug. And Norman Borlaug won the Nobel Peace Prize back in 1970 for creating a wheat variety that ended up—they say—saving 1 billion lives with a B, because he changed hybridization forever. And really, there is a lot that has to be said about what he did in starting the Green Revolution.

And he created the World Food Prize, and that awards scientists and politicians and world leaders this World Food Prize to honor people that are continuing that work. And so we got to be there. We got to meet the winner that year, and we get to spend time at the state Capitol with the Governor of Iowa. So very impactful for educators from all over the country and all over the world to get to do that together.

Winston Benjamin 19:31
Man, bro, I love all that you're doing because the part that I really appreciate is that students are learning responsibility, knowing that their actions matter to something bigger than themselves, right? Those are skills that any class, any teacher would hope that a student will walk away with, right? To be that involved. So I want to praise you and applaud you for the work you do in that way.

Continuing our conversation about your networking—you trying to show students how to actually do the work, do the network, instead of just talking the network—you were awarded a $378,000 grant from the USDA to purchase a mobile meat processing lab. What? Hold on, we've got to talk about that for a second. What is it? Tell me about it, and what's your goal for that other than teaching students about things? What's the actual goal?

Eric Sawatzke 20:32
Well, it goes back to talking about how career and tech ed has always been there to fulfill those needs in the trades. And COVID taught us a lot, right? And so one of the things that happened during COVID—on my side job, my unpaid job, my wife and I own a farm, and so we raised turkeys. And we were shipping turkeys out during the pandemic. This was during that spring of 2020. And typically when we load out turkeys, we fill seven semi loads of turkeys, and they get hauled about an hour away to a slaughter plant.

But what was happening was, at the slaughter facility, we had a lot of staff members that were either sick or choosing not to go to work because they were afraid of getting sick. And so the plant manager was calling us once an hour during load-out. It takes about six to eight hours to load out, and once an hour they were calling and letting us know if we could keep shipping our turkeys or not. And if not, there was a risk. They were saying they were looking at processing facilities as far away as Utah from Minnesota. Utah—that's a haul. And I do remember that was a cold night. The birds would not have made it. It wasn't a choice. They were going to have to stay with us, and that comes with a massive challenge.

And so that happened in every meat industry across the country. And we saw that the issue was we consolidated our meat processing to some small number of companies and large facilities, and we lost that backyard—well, not your backyard, but your hometown butcher. That's been something that's been a dying breed that we've been witnessing for a couple of decades now. A lot of those facilities that take on just a handful of animals just can't make it work anymore, or they're at a retirement age and there's nobody filling in behind them.

We forgot in ag education—I listed some of the classes—we forgot to have a meat processing division in ag education. We taught how to grow the animal. We taught how to cook the animal. We forgot to teach the middle part about how to actually work with that animal in a setting where we're going to learn how to make a cut of meat and make it presentable for the consumer.

And so I alluded to this a little bit, but the Global Teach Ag Network folks knew about this larger grant, the USDA grant, and they keyed me into this. This is that networking. So I was already done with Global Guides, and they said, "You've got something more going on in your community. Think bigger." And they weren't thinking meat. They were just thinking with our greenhouse, what else could we do? We could earn a grant to reduce food security issues in our area using this USDA process.

And so I got the community together. I got a bunch of community members in a meeting back in December, I want to say, of 2021. And I said, "If we went for a big grant—I'm talking $400,000 max—what would we do?" And the conversation went to meat pretty quickly, and it was from the community themselves. They just said, "We all have livestock. Some of us are shipping to Green Bay from western Minnesota—that's eastern Wisconsin—that's a haul, because there's nothing in between for us to go to." And so, "What if we could find a way to teach meat processing?" And the light just went off instantly, and we went after it.

And so we got a 36-foot trailer out of the deal. And so we teach out of that every day. And a lot of people think gore, right? You're thinking slaughter and all this other stuff and blood and all the grossness of processing. What I do is I actually bring in what's called boxed beef, or boxed pork. So a chef will buy that too. So chefs buy boxed—let's say a ribeye—so they'll get the whole prime rib cut, and then they cut it into whatever thickness ribeye they want it to be. So we just use that as a concept to introduce students.

We'll make a lot of seasoned brats, and so we'll just mix up some ground beef, and we'll add seasoning and teach them how to link up sausages and just give them that hands-on, practical experience. I can tell you, we've done it for two years now, and it is the thing that is keeping some of these kids going to school every day. That is the most exciting period of the day. Again, we are hands-on. It is not paper-pencil tests on identifying meats. It is you're literally working with the cuts of meat.

And we're working right now on getting a retail license. So we would be the first school in the state where we could sell this on a retail shelf too. So then we get our business department in—a part of career tech ed. We get BPA, the business professionals, students doing the marketing and selling. And our students have to have a completely safe food at a federal level. We are going to be cutting—currently we're at a state-level inspection. These kids are going to know the real deal. This isn't a made-up lab. So it's a really fun experience. It's been great.

We've blown this thing up across the whole state. Over 20 schools have picked this up in the last two years. The legislature has set aside two different grants. We've given away over $500,000 to other schools through legislative funds that we—at our school, our kids even got to testify in front of the Senate three times in the last year, telling the story so we can get more funding out there. It is fun, and it's spreading nationwide. We are seeing tons of schools across the nation talking about this and getting things started. There are great ag programs that have been doing this for 20, 30 years, but it was a very small percentage. This is a new wave, a new era. We're really excited about it.

Paul Beckermann 25:35
It's so cool. I mean, this goes back to the quote that we read at the beginning. There's relevancy that you're bringing to learning for kids. This is so awesome.

And another way that you're engaging kids is through FFA. I should have had Rena ask this question because she was in FFA. But can you talk a little bit about what FFA is, why that part of your career is important to you?

Eric Sawatzke 25:58
Yeah. So listeners my age or older might recognize the term Future Farmers of America, which was the starting point of FFA back since 1928, intentionally set up as an organization so that rural students planning to go back to the farm could develop confidence and know that they could speak in front of a crowd, they could judge an animal properly, or whatever that might be.

Once the 80s farm crisis hit, we realized that we needed to rebrand. They kind of evolved the name to just be National FFA. And we are a student organization within career and tech ed, just like you might have BPA, DECA, FCCLA, HOSA. There's all kinds of these student organizations. But FFA is youth-run. We're at that million-member mark across the nation right now, and students are gaining the ability to think and grow and lead on their own.

I just got done this weekend with our officer retreat for our new team for next year. They develop the goals. They set the schedules. They do the budgeting for the program. With our plant growth facility, our greenhouse and our meat processing, we have a rolling budget of over $30,000, and the students are in charge of it. They have to run that treasury, do a reconciliation every month, and develop that skill set. That's all through FFA.

And then they can go and do a lot of leadership development at the state, national, and international level. They can try out for different career development events if they really like—I heard Rena was a soils judger at one point. And so you can identify something maybe you're interested in, maybe you don't know, and your friend's doing it and just pulls you in. And then all of a sudden it becomes some interest area of yours.

And so great organization. That's what pulled me into ag education, and I've not lost any steam in my excitement for what FFA does for students.

Rena Clark 27:48
When you hear all of this, we talk about bringing in project-based learning, but you don't have to bring it in. It is project-based learning. It's multimodal. It's that hands-on piece that we keep talking about. It is built in. And again, back to the quote, it applies. It's so applicable to what's going on. So I just—I love that aspect. And there's so many kids that, like you said, that's the reason they're going to school is so they can take part in that class. That's what's clicking, what's working for them.

So for people that are listening, and maybe, depending on where you're teaching, you might have more access or not to different components of CTE, but what resources are available to schools or teachers who want to build either a better ag or maybe start, you know, building up some ag courses or a CTE program?

Eric Sawatzke 28:37
Yeah. So probably the biggest umbrella that most people in the career tech ed world talk about is called Perkins funding. It's a federal legislation, and it's specifically meant to fund career tech ed programs. Every state has a little bit of a different access point to it. Some schools have to apply individually. Minnesota, we're pretty lucky. We're a state where we can do it in a consortium of about 20 to 25 schools. It makes it a lot easier to access the fund.

So it's expensive to do career tech ed. We have to have equipment. We have to have facilities. You know, my ag budget out of my high school is currently $2,800. $2,800. And I just told you we run about $30,000 through our FFA program. We kind of pay for ourselves instead of worrying about using the local taxpayer's base funding, because we couldn't do any of what we do with that kind of a budget. And so Perkins funds allow us to get things like—recently we've bought an extra refrigerator for our meat processing. We've bought many welders. And you can get all the equipment that you need if it's something that is new and exciting for your program. If it's something a school did before, they kind of eliminate that as an option. But if it's something you want to innovate with, that's where we've accessed a lot of our dollars.

Depending on your state—we're lucky in Minnesota, we've got what's called the Minnesota Ag Ed Leadership Council. It's a legislatively funded program, so I can access grants directly for ag education there. And we've used that numerous times. But I would say most recently, a lot of what we've done have been outside of the normal ag education pool of funds, and that's where the big dollars are. I never thought I could write a $378,000 grant, but actually you can.

And I'm going to tell you something that's not a funding source—that's actually a funding source. That sounds a little weird, but my school, when I moved up here, I told them what I thought an ag program could be in their district. And they came back to me with an offer to hire me, but the principal literally said over the phone, "Eric, I'm going to offer you something. I don't want it to scare you, but we want to pay you to have an extra prep time per day. We want you to have two preps per day and not just one. I hope that doesn't scare you, but what you're asking or expecting out of your program is going to take more of your time than you're thinking, and you deserve time during the school day to do it."

I've had that now for eight or nine years. It has been everything. Every dime we've pulled in has come during that extra prep time, because I can make phone calls to businesses that are open during the school day, that aren't open at seven o'clock at night that us teachers are dreaming at seven and eight, nine o'clock at night, right? But I get to dream during the day, and I get to connect during the day. That has changed everything.

We are hiring our second ag teacher this coming year. She has signed her contract, and they gave her the same thing. So we're both given two preps instead of one. That was the game changer for us. So any district, if they can find the funds to afford to not have kids in front of the teacher for an extra 45 minutes, that has done it all. I was teaching—I had been teaching for 13 years before that. Never once did I dream of something like that and what it could do. And so that's a big one. That is probably the biggest thing that I can say is time—paid time to do the work that I normally would do at night.

Winston Benjamin 31:49
Oh, man, that's such a great toolkit thing for any administrator who's listening. It's time for our segment.

Transition Music with Rena's Children 31:58
What's in your toolkit?

Transition Music with Rena's Children 31:58
Check it out. Check it out. Check it out. Check it out. What's in the toolkit?

Winston Benjamin 32:09
Check it out. So today, well, I'm going to ask everybody—Paul, Rena, and then Eric, you mind if I ask you last—what's in your toolkit? What are you walking away? What's on your mind? What are you thinking about throwing in?

Rena Clark 32:21
I put just having opportunity knowledge, so trying things out. So we alluded to it. I did take some ag classes in high school, just honestly because my best friend was FFA president, grew up on a farm, and I wanted to raise a pig too. Why not? Wanted to figure that out. So I took—and I loved it. I loved it. And I learned how to weld. And actually, that still comes in handy today. Learning how to weld—so shocking—is a really good skill to have and to learn. So I just think trying, trying something on. If you're a student, encouraging that students try, especially CTE courses. And I know where we are in our district and around, kids that take CTE courses have a much higher percentage of graduation rates and opportunities. And I think that's a trend that we're seeing. And probably, you know, is because it's a different type of learning. It's hands-on, multimodal. And we're seeing this lack of engagement, but that really changes that because you're engaged. You're cutting up meat in a trailer. You are engaged.

Paul Beckermann 33:26
I concur, Rena, 100%.

Paul Beckermann 33:28
I was going to say kind of the same thing. You know, we need to give kids exposure to these different career areas. Kids who don't ever think about that as a career option need to see it because that might be the thing that's for them, and they just don't know. We've said on the show many times: You don't know what you don't know. Unless we open some of those doors, they won't know. You know, we need to give them exposure. I love—back when I was in, it was junior high at that time—we had to take so many electives in, you know, technical education or home economics. At that time it was called—now it's FACS. We had to take a certain number, and that exposure was invaluable. It just opens it up. Like you said, Eric, we get required to take music, but what about some of these other areas that could turn into careers for us too? So I echo what you say, Rena.

Winston Benjamin 34:20
I love all of that. But for me, one of the things that's really sticking out, and hopefully I can add in my toolkit, is really deeply thinking about cross-content connections. Like, Eric, when you were talking about, like, thinking about even the meat production, how are you going to connect with the marketing department? How are you going to connect with any of those things, right? And a kid being able to not only understand their context but then be able to apply it to another—you mentioned about being a politician. How do you make a policy that doesn't negatively impact someone who's in your constituency? So I really love the idea that it is deeper than just this one thing. It crosses all the boards, and you can really support students in really seeing themselves being capable of something. So I love that idea of the cross-content connection because I'm really seeing that. Eric, what would you like to add to the toolkit?

Eric Sawatzke 35:15
We'll just keep piggybacking off Winston. What I would like is for all teachers to hear that and hear, "Maybe I need to direct a student to a career tech ed course instead of to maybe my course or another post-secondary education option for an online course or whatever it might be." Maybe they don't need a full gamut of college readiness courses. And maybe sometimes a career readiness is just the right thing, just the right time. And I do need those students that aren't going to have a career directly involved in ag or in industry like construction or plumbing or whatever, to know what that's about, just to respect it and understand that that is as equally valuable as somebody who's walking through with a bachelor's or more and going into a career path that way.

Rena Clark 36:03
Absolutely. So lots to think about, lots to ponder. So that leads us into our next section: our one thing. It's time for that one thing.

Transition Music with Rena's Children 36:19
Time for that one thing. It's that one thing.

Rena Clark 36:22
So what is that one thing that we're still thinking about or we want to share? What do we have left?

Paul Beckermann 36:29
All right. You probably understand already that I'm going to have two things to that one thing. And you've shared so many good things with us, Eric, but what I'm dwelling on—one was that shift in demographics that you talked about, you know, that the baby boomers that took a lot of these careers for so many years are now kind of retiring out, and we have a great need that maybe has accelerated because of some of that. And the other thing that I was thinking about was a lot of these projects and grants that you've applied for are so empathy-based. They're like, "How can we care for our community? How can we care for others and serve others?" I think we need as much of that in this world as we can get.

Rena Clark 37:12
Absolutely.

Winston Benjamin 37:12
The thing that I'm—that's sticking out with me, and that's the one thing—is your administration recognized that you needed time, and they were like, "Let's do the thing that's going to make this thing work. Let's give them time." Mind-blowing. Admin, yo, figure out ways that you can help these teachers who are trying to do something do that thing. It will do great for your kids. The kids will be better, and they will have opportunities beyond what you can think of. Give them ways to be supported. Give them ways in those chances, including time. So that just blew my mind. That was that one thing that stuck with me.

Rena Clark 37:55
I love it. I was just saying we all eat. And like the thing is, when we think about it often—I was just thinking about this higher-level math class, and we're like, "When are we ever going to use this? Why is this ever going to apply to my life?" And you're talking about 80 to 85, 90% hands-on. And I can see a direct connection. We all eat. Like there it's applicable. I understand why we are doing this. And even if I don't go into that career, I have an understanding of it, or, you know, like this weekend when I have a leak in my shower, I at least have some understanding of what to do and what not to do. So I think that is just really a great opportunity, even if you—whether you choose to go into it or not, the exposure is essential. Okay, Eric, so your opportunity—that one last thing we want to leave with the listeners.

Eric Sawatzke 38:47
Well, I don't say this often in class, but every once in a while I tell the kids, "You know, do you want to have a job where you're so stressed out that you've got to get out and get your hands dirty to relax?" You know, there's plenty of those jobs too, where you did decide to go that four-year route, and you ended up in that great office. But you're so stressed out that you need to garden, or you need to buy a house to flip that you're doing on the weekends, and you're staying up late at night because that's the thing you're actually excited about. And then you go back to work to pay for it, right?

And so what if you just got paid to do that thing instead? And there's a lot of good hands-on jobs that can bring you a lot of excitement. And so that's that exposure again, just doing those things that you—maybe your parents, maybe your counselor, maybe other teachers weren't giving you a direction to go towards—and just go over there and give it a shot and see. Because that could be the thing that could pay the biggest bucks. Typically, that thing that most excites you, you're going to drive most towards success at anyhow. So try it out.

Paul Beckermann 39:42
Awesome. Well, we want to thank you for being with us here today, Eric. Thanks so much for joining us.

Eric Sawatzke 39:47
Yeah, thanks for having me. It's been good to connect and reconnect with Paul.

Paul Beckermann 39:51
You bet. Good luck with all your work in the future and keep inspiring those kids.

Eric Sawatzke 39:56
Thank you.

Winston Benjamin 39:57
Thank you.

Rena Clark 40:00
Thanks for listening to Unpacking Education.

Winston Benjamin 40:03
We invite you to visit us at avidopenaccess.org, where you can discover resources to support student agency and academic tenacity to create a classroom for future-ready learners.

Paul Beckermann 40:16
We'll be back here next Wednesday for a fresh episode of Unpacking Education.

Rena Clark 40:20
And remember: Go forth and be awesome.

Winston Benjamin 40:24
Thank you for all you do.

Paul Beckermann 40:27
You make a difference.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai