In 20-plus years of teaching, Miller has gained insight and watched attitudes change.
York News-Times Reprint
Written by Parker Garlough
Joel Miller, agriculture teacher at Hampton High School, is Nebraska’s Ag Educator of the Year. The title was awarded to him by Nebraska’s Natural Resource Districts, and he will be recognized at the annual NRD conference in September.
For more than 20 years, he has been working as an agricultural educator. His career choice was originally inspired by a high school adviser, and he has now gotten to watch many students choose career pathways of their own. None of them have followed in his exact footsteps and become agriculture educators themselves, though.
His daughter is planning to enroll in college as an agriculture educator. While he hopes she’ll continue along that path, he knows there’s no guarantee.
“Kids change their mind and change their major seven times while they’re in college,” Miller said. “So I’m not holding my breath yet.”
Education has changed a lot in the 20 years he’s been working, Miller said. One of the biggest adjustments for him was understanding that technology has shaped teenagers’ relationships to knowledge and learning.
“With them having a phone, quote, unquote, ‘the world at their fingertips,’ a lot of them feel like they know all the answers,” Miller said. “They’re less willing to listen and learn the way they used to … the kids are able to gather that information, but it’s a matter of whether they can … make the most sense of it to help them make informed decisions.”
Individualized attention to students and having thoughtful conversations with them can impart humility and openness, Miller said.
Another value he tries to impress upon his students is consistency. High schoolers are accustomed to largely being able to leave their studies behind once they leave campus, especially during summer break. However, because Miller’s agriculture class involves caring for live cattle (known as the Hawk Herd), the work is year-round. His students often have trouble adapting to this new mindset, he said.
“Most kids, when the last bell rings in the spring, leave school and they don’t come back,” Miller said. “They just expect the animals to be there when they come back in August.”
Some of his students are especially dependable, though, and they coordinate the summer chore schedule using a group chat.
The Hawk Herd was established in 2020 and has grown to produce more than enough beef for Hampton Public Schools’ school lunches.
Having an end goal for the animals they raise is important to Miller. Students have raised the possibility of raising other animals, like goats, but “we’d have to re-establish our mission and have our ducks in a row before we would venture into something like that,” Miller said. He doubts the program will expand into other species in the near future.
Instead, his intended next step is to upgrade parts of the facilities in order to improve the efficiency of corralling and caring for the cattle. That way, “when the vet comes out, we’re not wasting a whole lot of his time.”
