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Skirvin’s ag educator award more than just hers
ROACHDALE — Kate Skirvin has been with North Putnam’s FFA program for the past 19 years. She previously taught at Cloverdale Schools for five years to begin what has become a meaningful career in agriculture education.
For her dedication to her students and to North Putnam’s FFA, Skirvin was recently honored with the Indiana Association of Agriculture Educators’ (IAAE) Outstanding Agriculture Educator award.
This recognition by her peers is not just about accomplishments. For Skirvin, much of it is about raising awareness about what agriculture means, and about how a solid agriculture program is a three-circle model.
A native of the Woodburn area near Fort Wayne, Skirvin did not grow up on a farm. Her first exposure to agriculture came when she had to take an exploratory class in the seventh grade.
She liked agriculture as opposed to home economics. She learned about horticulture and landscaping and about leadership public speaking and conducting meetings. Those interests kept expanding once she got involved in FFA at Woodlan High School.
But it was an encounter she had as a sophomore that truly solidified her love for agriculture.
During a tour of a working farm she led for kindergartners, a chaperone pulled her by the shirt and accused her of lying about where milk comes from after seeing the dairy cows. For him, it came from the store, not the cows.
“It changed my life, because you’re talking about a grown adult who doesn’t understand how the agriculture sector works,” Skirvin related. “Once there becomes a disconnect, and people in Washington are making decisions about the way that we can produce our crops and the way we can fill our food supply, that makes me scared.”
The aim of the three-circle model is to get FFA and classroom agriculture education connected with supervised experiences. Students should have opportunities to apply what they have learned to on-the-job training and career development.
Knowing that not all of her students will work in agriculture production, Skirvin still wants them to be advocates. She wants them to share how farmers treat their animals, and how food crops get from the field to consumers.
Skirvin emphasized that she and fellow North Putnam FFA adviser Janna Oxford value time spent looking for what students are passionate about. She also credits the work of Heather Clingan, who is going back to her home program at Cloverdale after a year at North Putnam.
As such, providing students with opportunities, as well as resources, to pursue those passions is how they can become greater advocates and citizens.
“It’s not just cows, plows and sows,” she put it. “It’s about being a leader and being a job seeker and wanting to give back to our community. It is helping kids be able to apply what they’ve learned, and to take those skills that we taught them, and let them know that they have the power to do those things elsewhere.”
The award for Skirvin is a humbling acknowledgment of this commitment. It is also a recognition of the successes and outreach North Putnam’s FFA chapter and its members have both locally and at the state and national levels.
There are aspects more in her wheelhouse than Oxford’s (whom she said has a black thumb and is not allowed to touch the plants) and those which are not. It takes a firm sense of humility to identify those strengths and weaknesses.
“It takes different personalities to achieve big things,” Skirvin said. “There are kids who connect better with me than they connect with Janna, but there are also a lot of kids who connect better with Janna. That’s what you want. You want a program that is going to be able to connect with everyone.”
Seeing the importance of connections, she pointed to the influence Duane Huge has had on how she has approached teaching and advising since teaching with him at Cloverdale. She still calls him whenever she has a question or needs advice.
“I hope that people think about me the way I think about Duane,” Skirvin said. “I just want to say that I have made as big of an impact on someone’s life as he has on mine and the thousands of kids that he’s had.”
The award is one more validation for Skirvin that she is continuing to make an impact at North Putnam. However, she sees it as a recognition not just for her as an educator, but for her fellow FFA advisers and the agricultural community in Putnam County.
“It is not just mine,” Skirvin finally said. “We have always worked together to accomplish great things. I’m excited to see what the future holds.”