Due to COVID-19-related issues, National Agriculture in the Classroom canceled this year’s national conference “Agriculture Elevated” in Salt Lake City, Utah. The conference is being replaced with a virtual event to help teachers and volunteer educators still receive some agricultural literacy professional development training.

The event, 2020 NAITC Virtual Summit, is set for June 24-25, the same days as the canceled conference.

“The virtual National Ag in the Classroom conference is a great opportunity for Texas teachers to engage in valuable professional development while also learning more about how to incorporate agriculture into the classroom,” Jordan Walker, Texas Farm Bureau director of Educational Outreach, said. “The presenters have a variety of experiences in increasing agricultural literacy among all grades and subject areas. Although nothing can replace the face-to-face conference, the virtual platform offers teachers everywhere, who otherwise might not have been able to travel to Utah this year, a unique opportunity to engage with the conference.”

The online sessions are free and open to anyone interested in pre-kindergarten through 12th grade agricultural literacy.

Twelve workshops are scheduled during the virtual conference. Each workshop will be one hour in length.

The six workshops on the first day are geared to elementary levels, and the six workshops on the second day are geared to secondary levels. These trainings cover reading, writing, math, science, social studies, STEM and other subject areas. Some of the presenters are the developers of these lessons and are teachers, Agriculture in the Classroom state contacts and National Center for Agricultural Literacy (NCAL) curriculum specialists.

Tune in for Illinois Agriculture in the Classroom’s Kevin Daugherty’s “Scrambled States of Agriculture” and for NCAL’s Andrea Gardner’s “Climate Change, Carbon Hoofprints and Bananas in our Breadbasket?” workshops, among others.

Click here to view the agenda and learn more about the virtual workshops, the presenters who will be conducting them and the dates and times of these presentations.

To register for the virtual summit, click here.

To participate in the workshops, you must register to receive the Zoom links. These links will not be published on the website.

For more information, email info@naitco.org.