Last week was National Teach Ag Week in the United States, put on by our friends at Teach Ag. It is meant to be a week celebrating agriculture educators and encouraging young professionals to pursue careers in agriculture education. The need for agriculture teachers is great, and their mission is important: to encourage students to pursue careers in agriculture after graduation from high school.
AgCareers.com’s vision is “To feed the world with talent.” In support of that mission, we actively provide and update resources for agricultural students and job seekers as well as for agriculture educators. One of our most popular resources that continually drive those interested in an agricultural career to our site is our Career Profiles. The AgCareers.com Career Profiles were created as a resource to increase learning and understanding around the great variety of opportunities in agriculture and food.
New to AgCareers.com or our Career Profiles? Here is a short overview of how to use the AgCareers.com Career Profiles, whether you are exploring career opportunities in agriculture or teaching about them.
Using as a Student or New Graduate:
- Explore Career Options in Agriculture – The AgCareers.com Career Profiles are easy and straightforward to utilize. The profiles are divided into seven pathways: Agricultural Business, Agricultural Mechanics, Animal Science, Environmental Services, Food Science, Natural Resources, and Plant Science. Click on the pathway you are interested in. From there, you will see a listing of career opportunities within that pathway.
Choose a career of interest to learn more about it. Each profile features a short overview of what the job entails followed by a detailed list of typical job responsibilities. Continue scrolling and you will find education requirements to get the job (including which high school courses are valuable to take), typical employers, and future job market outlook.
- Explore Openings in Your Field of Interest – Ready to start exploring current job openings in your career profile of interest? AgCareers.com has active job listings on each Career Profile as well. Scroll to the bottom of a Career Profile for current openings related to that job.
Using as an Agriculture Educator
- Educational Tool around Agricultural Careers –Want to teach your students about agricultural careers? The Career Profiles are an excellent resource. Build lessons and coursework around researching careers of interest to your students. We have also made infographics around our Career Profiles that many agricultural educators have created posters and games from. You can view the Career Profile infographics here. Contact kristine.penning@agcareers.com with questions regarding the Career Profiles or the Career Profile infographics.
- Lesson Plans –We are excited to share that we have developed lesson plans built around the AgCareers.com Career Profiles for agricultural educators teaching middle and high school students. Be on the lookout for these in the next few months—we will make an announcement on our website and social media networks when they are available.
Kristine Penning
September 21, 2020
Newsletter Article
