Growing up in suburban Detroit, my family took vacations to the Outer Banks in North Carolina. Ten years ago I moved to a rural town in North Carolina as a high school student and was surprised to find that agriculture was still a way of life. My experiences with agriculture extremely limited, I was slightly disappointed that I had better views of tobacco fields as opposed to the ocean I had pictured when my parents originally mentioned North Carolina. Fast forward ten years and I am trading in my teacher summer vacation for a summer trip into the world of agricultural education.

I think back to the fall when a robotics student asked me why the FFA high school organization was coming to visit our after-school club. Oh, how I wish I could go back in time to answer that question again! I’m currently four days into my six week internship with Bayer CropScience as a Kenan Fellow. Already, the applications and connections for my fifth grade students and curriculum are numerous.

Of course, naturally I think about the units I teach on ecosystems and genetics. I reflect on the tour I took of the bee care center and the passion that Bayer has for studying and promoting bee health. I also think about seed trait research being conducted in the greenhouse I visited this morning and connect this to teaching students about traits that are both learned and inherited. I see words on posters such as viscosity and density, science vocabulary that relates to the physical science component of fifth grade curriculum.

What about the other 21^st century skills I can take back to my students? Whether interviewing or receiving a tour from someone, I have asked what his/her goals are for the position. Surprisingly, every person has a people-related answer to my question. For example, a scientist mentioned keeping his team motivated when trials are unsuccessful. A fifth grader would expect the scientist’s goal to be success in research such as finding a successful trait modification. This demonstrates that no matter how tech-savvy our world is communication and relationship skills will always be highly valued, a take away from the week also echoed by the CEO I met Monday morning. In our world of instant gratification I wonder how my students would respond to working in a job in which they have to wait weeks, months, or even years to see results (whether positive or negative) from their work today. My kids could barely handle waiting a few days to receive their EOG scores last week. The product cycle can take 10-15 years from start to finish in agricultural science.

If I could go back and answer that robotics student again, I would challenge him to brainstorm ways that technology could help farmers. Afterwards, I would validate the student’s work and spend time explaining that farming is an applied life science that uses technology, including robotics, at every stage. Students have this perception of farming as being cows and plows; separate from the technology that they use every day. From what I’ve learned in four days, nothing could be further from the truth. Will I have a different answer in four weeks? I’m not sure, but I do know that I look forward to continuing to think about how my experiences at Bayer CropScience can positively impact classroom learning.