A majority of the students in Kelly Viall’s seventh and eighth grade agriculture classes at Amboy Junior High School probably have never encountered an emu.

But those students, in about 50 days, may have the chance to meet five of them. The large, dark green eggs in Viall’s classroom incubator are from a former AJHS agriculture teacher who also is a former student of Viall’s. Introducing her students to emu eggs and, hopefully, baby emus, is a part of what Viall likes best about teaching – and teaching agriculture – to junior high school students.

“I love giving them ag information for the first time. I love teaching them about the types and breeds of animals and why soil is important and that sort of stuff,” Viall said.

She is in her first year of teaching at Amboy, and her schedule is full. Viall teaches agriculture to seventh and eighth grade students through the Discovery Program, in which students take 12 weeks each of agriculture, art, creative writing, financial literacy and music. Along with Amboy High School ag teacher and FFA adviser Joseph Heavner, she teaches ag classes at AHS, including ag math, welding and ag construction.

Viall said introducing students to agriculture and FFA in middle school allows them to gain more from those programs earlier.

“I think it gives kids more opportunities and it starts them sooner on the journey. The thing that I tell my high school freshmen is try everything and find the things you are good at or the things you want to do. When you have a middle school program, you can back that up even more. Your seventh and eighth graders can try the career development events, they can try the different record books, they can see what they really want to do and focus on that,” Viall said.

Her goal in teaching is to be the ag teacher she needed when she was in ag and FFA at Ashton-Franklin Center High School.

“There’s been a shift in ag education, and I am part of it because there are significantly more female teachers now than when I was a kid. That was not a thing then. I went through a good ag program and I learned a lot from it and I saw the ag teacher that I needed, and I try to be that for my kids,” she said.

Viall switches hats throughout her school day, teaching ag to junior high school students and ag math and welding, among other topics, to high school students.

“I teach ag math, and I find that very important. I know a lot of kids struggle with math. I am one of those kids. I married an engineer, and he uses all the fancy math. I don’t. But practical application of math, when you can show a kid ‘here’s how you are going to use it,’ that improves their attitude a whole bunch about actually learning how to do the math, when they know how to use it, when it’s not just variables and concepts,” Viall said.

Students who take ag classes in Illinois are automatically enrolled in FFA, with their dues paid by the Illinois Department of Agriculture. That includes students at the middle school level. While ag classes bring information, participation in FFA brings soft skills that students will use in all areas of their lives.

“Most of the kids who go through any ag program aren’t going to go into production agriculture,” she said. “All of these skills that they come out of FFA with are important, like public speaking. It’s those soft skills that FFA teaches that you can use anywhere, like getting to know people. We take these kids to conferences, we make them go make friends because we put them in groups who are not people they know, so they know they are going to have to get to know people. They know they are going to have to talk to people. They are going to have to explain and defend your project. These are all skills that go anywhere.”

One of the challenges and opportunities that Viall sees is the chance to help students discover what they are good at and what they enjoy among the opportunities in FFA.

“Part of it is showing them that success but I think part of it is finding kids and convincing them that they have the ability to do something. Part of it is mining that out of them, and part of it is volunteering them for it, like ‘hey, I think you’d be good at this,’ or ‘you need to try this.’ There is resistance when you do that, but I think when they see success with stuff, they are like ‘oh yeah’, and then they bring a friend along, and that is part of building it,” Viall said.

Middle school FFA members can participate in most of the same contests that high school FFA students participate in, and Viall encourages that.

“I take kids to almost every contest, not that we are going to win them, but this is that ‘go experience it and see what you are good at and what you like’,” she said.