This post is part of the Science Tuesday feature series on the U.S. Department of Agriculture blog. Check back each week as we showcase stories and news from the agency’s rich science and research portfolio.
During this week – National Agriculture Week—agriculture groups all across the country are coming together to recognize and promote agriculture’s numerous contributions to society. National Agriculture Week also gives the farm community an opportunity to reach out to students and educators to reinforce the importance of agricultural education in the classroom. To that end, new classroom lesson plans that meet National Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources standards along with outreach kits are available to teachers and students.
As the Administrator of the United States Department of Agriculture’s National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS), I have a deep passion for the importance of math and statistics in everyday life. My experiences with the U.S. Census Bureau and the United Kingdom’s Office for National Statistics have instilled the need to promote education on surveys and data to all ages.
Recently, I was personally involved with the Census at School project and have worked to expand it to the United States. This interactive project gives students the opportunity to conduct their own survey and then access and analyze the responses from different countries. Working on this project, gave me a great opportunity to collaborate with education leaders around the country and contribute to their efforts of bringing first-class education to the classrooms.
At NASS we have a strong commitment to helping students better understand agriculture through statistics and the importance of statistics to the farming community, rural America, and society as a whole. Our agency has partnered with the National FFA to develop curricula using the current Census of Agriculture data. These lessons plans are aimed at students from kindergarten level through 12th grade.
We strongly encourage all students and educators to tap into these valuable resources. The materials are all free of charge and are available online via the NASS website and the FFA Learning Center.
