STERLING — A pair of teachers are sowing the seeds of agricultural curiosity in Sterling High School students.

Megan Stanley and Taylor Irvin run the agriculture program at SHS. The program offers a variety of interactive classes, including crop and animal sciences, agriculture mechanics, horticulture, woodworking and landscape design.

“In crop science, we go through the grain and the soil, how plants grow, weeds and plant diseases,” Irvin said. “Right now, we’re ending with ag business, and then we’ll get into crop scouting with drones. For basic ag mechanics, we have it broken into four chunks. We start with woods, and then we go into electricity and welding, and then end the year with small engines.”

Irvin, who joined SHS last year, teaches crop science, intro to agriculture science and animal science. She also teaches basic agriculture mechanics alongside Stanley.

“As a kid, I thought I wanted to be a kindergarten teacher,” Irvin said. “That is, until my junior year of high school when I got heavily involved in FFA. I liked the variety that ag education provided. I don’t come from a farm background, so it was all new to me, and I liked that challenge. I like science, and ag science is a different sector that I’ve fallen in love with.”

Stanley has been with SHS for five years and teaches horticulture 1 and 2, agriculture mechanics 2 and agriculture woodworking. Unlike Irvin, she did not originally plan on becoming a teacher.

“I always thought I’d work outside somewhere and wanted to be a game warden,” Stanley said. “But then I got into my coursework and I wasn’t sure if I could see myself doing that anymore. I was in FFA in high school and always said I’d either be a game warden or a farmer, so this was a natural transition. I get to be outside and share my passion for the environment with the students.”

Irvin said many ag students enjoy the interactive, hands-on aspect of the classes. SHS student Rachel Kirchoff agrees.

“We’re working on our foods unit and learning how to preserve jams and things like that,” Kirchoff said. “Before that, we learned about taste blindness and how our different senses affect our ability to taste things, using nose plugs.”

According to ilaged.org, the high school became a part of FFA’s national chapter in 1935 with about 30 active students during the first year. The chapter was active until at least 1965, when Sterling’s team won a national title at one of the competitions, according to sterlingschoolsfoundation.org.

In July 2016, Sterling High School rechartered its agriculture program, which Stanley said had been previously discontinued for several years. In addition to hiring Irvin in 2024, Sterling Public Schools secured an additional plot of farmland at the corner of Science Ridge Road and Sixth Avenue in Sterling for its students to use as a lab from Sterling landowner Kevin Duncan.

“My crop science class has gone out there multiple times during the fall semester for soil testing, and we did yield estimates when the corn was close to harvest,” Irvin said. “This year, the class is going to be selecting the seed. We’re going to run it as a test spot. They’re going to select three different seeds to hopefully plant soon.”

Despite the range of classes Stanley and Irvin teach, they continue to look for ways to bring more options into the program, such as Stanley’s hope for an upper-level woodworking class.

“We’d love to teach three more classes, but there’s just not enough time in the day,” Stanley said. “So, we’re trying to figure out how we can meet the needs of our students while also lining that up to our passions. These kids are amazing, and I can’t wait to see where the future takes them.”