The urban-rural divide has continually widened over the past few decades, but since 1990, the Nebraska Farm Bureau Foundation has been bridging that gap in the Cornhusker State one letter and one classroom at a time.
Ellen Hellerich started the Ag Pen Pals program for the 1990-91 school year, with the goal of reaching 20 classrooms with letters from Nebraska farmers and ranchers to tell agriculture’s story. The program connects farmers or ranchers with a classroom, with the farmers asked to send at least three letters throughout the school year, one for each season.
Today, the program boasts 217 matches, meaning that the state’s farmers and ranchers are communicating with 217 classrooms across the state.
“Rural and urban classrooms participate,” says Courtney Shreve, director of outreach education and coordinator for the Ag Pen Pals program. “We see that the highest demand comes from Lincoln and Omaha classrooms to participate in the program.”
The program is open to pre-kindergarten through eighth grade classrooms, although Shreve says, “The Ag Pen Pal program fits well with Nebraska fourth grade classrooms because of the tie to the social studies standards.”
Since the program’s inception, there have been repeat participants on both sides of the ledger — teachers and farmers. “Many connections in the program last for five or more years, meaning the classroom writes to the same farmer for that amount of time,” Shreve says.
Farmer perspective
Andra Smith, a farmer from Cherry County in the heart of the Sandhills of north-central Nebraska, has been participating in the program for seven years, sharing stories of her family’s black Angus cow-calf ranch through videos, photos and visits to the multiple classrooms with which she interacts.
In her interaction with the students, she does her best to convey the real happenings of ranch life, regardless of the situation. “I try to give the kids real life of what it is,” she says. “Like, it’s not all just hard work, but it’s all not just running around on four-wheelers and having a great time.”
That interaction includes Smith sharing what this year’s drought means to the ranch that has been in the family since 1884. Chester and Andra are the sixth generation, and their children, Charlie, 8, William, 6, and Josie, 4, represent the seventh generation.
She has written to kindergarten classes for the past five years, as well as fourth grade classes and a second grade class, enjoying them all. But she prefers the fourth graders “because they’re getting to where they can appreciate even the science of farming.”
Smith and the other volunteer pen pals can put forth their best efforts telling the agriculture story, but she realizes they also need buy-in from the classroom teachers.
Teachers such as Beverly Grueber, now retired from North Bend Central Elementary, are “amazing at bringing agriculture into the classroom, and then making us a part of their classroom as well,” Smith says. “She had our brand written on their chalkboard and our ranch pinpointed on their map of Nebraska. … All the teachers are great, but she gave us such a good first experience that really encouraged me to do more and be the best pen pal I could be.”
Use technology at hand
With the program’s origins predating the wide use of email, and even the concept of social media, the mode of communication between farmers and classrooms has changed, creating a richer exchange compared with the original pen-to-paper method.
Smith uses technology that’s available to share her agriculture message with the multiple classrooms, mostly corresponding by email with letters, photos and videos of ranch happenings.
“Advice I’ve given to other pen pals is I write to the classes as though I’m writing to a friend,” she says. “This is what’s happening [on the ranch]. I’m always sure to tell the kids all the names of our pets, even though the pets aren’t really a part of our operation, but they are a part of our life.”
Ideally, students will correspond with the farmer-rancher pen pals, and that’s when Smith realizes that she is making a difference. “If they have questions, I try to respond to each of them,” which can become time consuming when she corresponds with multiple classrooms and each classroom has 20 to 25 students. Individual replies can be a daunting task, but the sheer numbers of that impact also are rewarding to Smith.
In addition to the correspondences, Smith says her family tries to visit each classroom in person, but of course, COVID-19 put a kink in those plans.
Again stressing the importance of teachers putting forth an effort to educate the youth, and in this case to educate about agriculture, Smith speaks of one teacher who even though students were all online learning, she “went to a lot of work to send me back their response. It was taking pictures of their stuff and sending it to me, and sending me their questions that way.”
Smith enjoys all interaction with the students, sensing the two-way conversation is making an impact, an impact that they are hopefully sharing with their parents. “One of the neatest things I got was a fourth grade class in Omaha, at the end of the year, they made me an ‘ABC’ book that was all about our ranch,” she says. “I loved it; it was the coolest thing.”
Although this program runs through the Nebraska Farm Bureau Foundation, farmer-participants do not need to be Farm Bureau members, but they do need to be farmers or ranchers, “because the program promotes that you’re going to learn about daily life on the farm, and so we get people who live that day in and day out to write,” Shreve says.
Smith encourages other ranchers and farmers to get involved to tell the stories of their operations, getting involved in advocacy. “Whatever your passion is, be an advocate for it,” she says. “If everybody has the perspective that ‘somebody else will do it,’ then there’s actually nobody else to do it.”
The pen pal program begins each year Sept. 1, with the farmer-volunteer sending the first letter by Sept. 30. Sign-up for the program opens April 1 and closes Aug. 10.
Contact Shreve for more information on the Ag Pen Pals program at [email protected] or 402-421-4461.
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