CottonsJourney.com offers farm fresh produce & information on food & fiber plants
Title
Cotton's Journey
Description
This educational program is designed to give inquisitive minds a whole unit experience through the provided teacher’s guide & classroom resources. The curriculum puts into practice the inquiry-based approach and meets many National Education Standards for all disciplines. Lessons are written for grades 1-8; lists objectives and the standards fulfilled; and follow a simple format to allow for quick reference, flexibility and time efficiency. Cotton’s Journey wants to give you, the educator, ownership of this unit by determining where each lesson fits into your classroom plan and the opportunity to combine curriculum that supports national recommendations. Students will be challenged by open-ended discussions, group learning and hands-on activities.
To educate and inform educators and their students of the benefits that the cotton industry provides to the communities that we live in. The general public has been provided with limited information of the production and origin of their food and fiber supply. The Alaca Company, producer of "Cotton's Journey-A Field Trip In A Box", is dedicated to supporting educators as they teach our next generation about the multi-disciplinary aspects of cotton, and while building a communications bridge between the cotton industry and education.
News Article From Western Farm Press Magazine by Doreen Muzzi, Oct. 2002 ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ This is a story about how Janette Yribarren struck a match. It took a while to run it along the box's sandpaper side, but by the time she'd finally done it -- heard the match hiss, spark and glow -- she was fueled on two things: exasperation and potential. “We had to start educating if agriculture is to remain a viable industry and cotton a profitable commodity.” And so, after striking the match in pitch black, Janette reached out and lit a candle. Her efforts are now helping teachers fan the fires in young minds as they teach the core subjects using cotton as their subject matter. “Farmers are good and productive people, concerned about our environmental future no less than non-farmers. We’ve been farming for 29 years, and we are fighting regulations all of the time. If voters understood what we have to deal with on the farm, I feel they would be more sympathetic to us as an industry,” she says. “It seems so many of our urban friends have forgotten where their roots came from and need to be reminded that it was agriculture that built the backbone of this country.” To do that, she set her mind to providing teachers with the tools needed to give our youngest citizens a basic understanding of who farmers are, what they do, and why they do it. “I learned early on that teachers are wary of advertising in the classroom and are suspicious of materials provided by organizations. So I set out to develop and design a curriculum easy for the teacher to incorporate and fun for the student to learn. In order to establish credibility, all of the lesson plans had to meet educational standards, follow the latest teaching trends and be classroom tested.” Then, she conducted educator in-services to college teaching credential programs, schools, conferences and seminars. By teaching teachers about cotton and it’s industry they would be comfortable and willing to use her classroom materials. “Teachers are our best spokespersons,” says Yribarren. “They just need to be given the tools.”
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