Farm school

THE FARM

STORY AND PHOTOS BY BRITTON LEDINGHAM

Just a couple of kilometres north of where the blacktop ends on 24th Avenue northwest of Airdrie is a group of students getting back to their roots.

Led by teachers Matt Chomistek and Mark Turner, 40 students learn their core subjects with a twist. The ingenuity of the educational venture known as The Farm, a product of Rocky View Schools Community Learning Centre (RVS CLC), is rejuvenating the homestead property.

Chickens feed in a coop built by the students metres from two ATCO trailers where the Grades 9-11 students are engaged in schoolwork.

Growing up on a farm near Rainier, south of Brooks, Chomistek knew the power of teaching in a rural environment, and was excited to get involved when the idea began three years ago.

“There’s so much math and physics and social studies, right, like talking about sustainability or the way that markets work. That’s all here, right,” he says excitedly, sitting on a square bale behind an old building on the property donated for the project by Wayne and Rhonda Hanson.

“You see it all in farming, and so being able to apply those curricular outcomes to something really, truly tangible that you can see and you can touch, it makes the learning that much more powerful for students.”

The youth are visibly engaged as they help fix a gate on the chicken coop, build a structure for turkeys coming later in the day, or even listen to Chomistek teach in the classroom.

Mark Norregaard’s eyes beam while sitting in the same makeshift interview seat.

“I’m excited to see how the year turns out, to be honest,” says Norregaard, a Grade 9 student from George McDougall High School. “Three weeks here, and we’ve already got chicken coops and a shed. It’s really coming along ... I’m just happy to be here and excited to see how this turns out.”

The fifth-generation farmer from near Balzac mentions a love of math and science.

“If you can convert that into farming, it’s you know, a win-win combination for me, I just cling to it,” says Norregaard. “I’d love to take over the farm.... I love everything about it. Combining,

seeding, and I’d love to go to a higher education, go maybe into vet school, possibly, or at least go to Olds College and take a couple agriculture courses there.”

He’s not alone in having a clear-headed vision of his future. His peer, Rachel Carroll, a Grade 10 Bert Church High School student born and raised in Airdrie, is talking about being a middle-school teacher herself one day.

“So I could help kids who don’t normally do well in regular classrooms, because the system’s kind of failing them, and I don’t think that’s very fair,” says Carroll, adding the farm environment with flexible classes has offered her “a better opportunity to succeed.”

You can’t help but wonder if the clarity is something to do with the air, the water or the lack of water – the students are practically homesteading as they need to source water for themselves and their livestock on the rural property. They’re learning resourcefulness.

Classes start at 9 a.m. each morning, end with lunch at noon, and the afternoons are filled with practical projects around the farm. There is always some fence to build or an area to prep for a pen for the pigs, turkeys, goats and bees they plan to get along with a greenhouse, not to mention the students’ wish for a donkey or the plan for acres of garden test plots they will seed next spring.

Carter Mitschke, a fifth-generation farmer from west of Airdrie, sounds like you could tack another 20 years to his age. He drives an ’80s GMC pickup and loves farming “more than anything.”

The Grade 11 George McDougall student dreams of studying agriculture at Olds College, or carpentry at SAIT.

“I just love being outside, I’ll get my hands dirty, and just running equipment makes me happier than anything,” says Mitschke. “It’s ... what I want to do for the rest of my life.”

He’s thriving and wants to complete enough credits to graduate in Grade 11, partly because the program doesn’t extend to Grade 12 yet.

For now, he’s excited about learning how to work together with his peers. Segmented into different project groups for working with different animals or horticulture, the students are given the reins to lead on projects.

For Mitschke, it’s the garden.

“I just kind of want to see how different crops grow ... and just kind of test stuff out,” says the young farmer. He’s helped line up a rented mower to level some weeds in an area to be cultivated.

He envisions corn, lettuce and other vegetables, along with barley and wheat.

Chomistek isn’t naive to the product of The Farm.

“I just love that they have that confidence and agency to form what we’re trying to do here,” he says.

“You see it all in farming, and so being able to apply those curricular outcomes to something really, truly tangible that you can see and you can touch, it makes the learning that much more powerful for students”

The Farm was supposed to launch on the rural site earlier in 2020, but COVID-19 delayed plans until September. Before March, students were in the cafeteria at George McDougall High School, doing their studies and taking part in field trips to places like Grow Calgary and the University of Calgary.

INCEPTION

The idea came about when a parent, Lindsey Morrison, brought it forward to the Rocky View School Division three years ago.

“We’re very lucky that the board and Rocky View Schools – everybody – supported the idea,” says Chomistek, adding he and Turner, along with RVS CLC principal Murray Arnold, pursued grants to fund the program.

“We’re very happy to have what we do now. It’s just very exciting to see all of our plans coming to action with all the students out here.”

The challenges along the way are something he doesn’t hide.

“Mistakes are so formative and have such a valuable imprint,” says Chomistek. “We used to say on the farm that ... either way, it was good, because everything either went right, or you had a good story.” This story is turning into a page-turner.

“It is better than I had hoped, actually,” says Chomistek. “That’s the beauty of this place … we do have the freedom to let the students build what this is going to be like.”

Autonomy and passion have been encouraged in the pupils.

“We give them kind of broad directions, and they have the ability to pursue that,” says Chomistek. “We are kind of just there for help and guidance when they ask for it.”

The teacher of 13 years has gained a wide variety of experience in rural and urban environments around southern Alberta.

He was last a part of the Building Futures program in Cochrane, which similarly draws students out of a traditional classroom to learn while building homes.

“Without a program like that I don’t think we exist,” says Chomistek, acknowledging the work of Arnold to lead both Building Futures and The Farm as principal of RVS CLC.

With the mentality that new blood will bring new ideas, Chomistek doesn’t plan to be a part of The Farm forever, but he hopes it will continue forever.

“There’s almost endless growth that a student can get out here,” he says. “Regardless of the academic ability, or other struggles that they might have come here with, the opportunity for growth is incredible.” life