As part of the Student Teaching Experience, #psuaged22 participated in the Global Teach Ag Network (GTAN). GTAN is an entity that empowers teachers to combat global issues in agriculture and food security by connecting them with experts, organizations, and businesses around the world. There are different supplemental programs including GLAGjr, GLAGreads, and GLAGcreates that make up the Global Learning in Agriculture community. Over the past few weeks #psuaged22 has been participating in GLAGreads.
This year the book for GLAGreads is Our Changing Menu by Michael Hoffman, Carrie Koplinka-Loehr, and Danielle Eiseman. This book details the relationship between our food and our climate. After explaining how climate change is affecting our food supply, the book explains the affect that climate change has on different food products such as beer, wine, and spirits, salads, meats, grains, coffee, and sugar.
Always the one to look forward to what's coming after the main course, the dessert and coffee section was my favorite to read about. Here I learned about the production of products like sugar, chocolate, vanilla, milk, and coffee. Higher temperatures and changing precipitation patterns has affected the growth of these crops, but this section discusses how practices such as soil conservation, climate smart farming, and more tolerant crops can combat this drop in production. This book is an excellent resource not only to learn the current effects of climate change on various products around the world, but also how we can combat global climate change in our own homes through the food that we eat.
While participating in GLAG, I attended two virtual GLAGreads sessions. The first session I attended was the Global Farmer Experience. Here I engaged in a session where we were taken through a simulation of the decisions that farmers in developing countries need to make for their families and their products. I really enjoyed this session as attendees from across the world were able to work together to decide on how we were going to navigate the scenarios we were given. I not only learned a lot about what farmers in developing countries need to think about to maximize their success, but also about the importance of different perspectives when it comes to solving global problems. The second session that I attended was the 2022 GLAGreads Author Talk. At this session the attendees were able to talk with author Dr. Michael Hoffman about Our Changing Menu. I enjoyed the opportunity to hear a more in depth perspective about the relationship between the food supply and climate change during this session especially as attendees were able to ask Dr. Michael Hoffman questions.
Overall, being exposed to GLAG as a Student Teacher has allowed me to "think big" about the content that I am teaching. With agriculture being such a broad topic to teach about, I feel that it is easy to just teach to what is happening with agriculture in our immediate vicinity. GLAG has helped me to think beyond my nation when it comes to topics to talk about in the classroom. GLAG also allows for many opportunities that I am excited to incorporate into my classroom in the future.
"Taylor"ed with love,
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