Indiana soybean checkoff offering a free middle School ag curriculum 

The Indiana Soybean Alliance (ISA) has partnered with Cutting Edge Curriculum to teach agriculture to middle school students. Cutting Edge Curriculum is a not-for-profit corporation created by agricultural education advocates with a focus on curriculum development for Career and Technical Education (CTE) including Ag Education, Business, Family and Consumer Sciences, Health and Industrial Technology. 

Cutting Edge Curriculum houses the MYCAERT system to provide this curriculum to teachers and students through an online subscription. The MYCAERT system delivers lesson plans and support materials, signature E-Units for student use, and web-based assessments aligned to academic standards. 

ISA provides free subscriptions to this curriculum and online tools to Indiana students and teachers. 

Brooklyn Williams is an ag teacher and FFA advisor in her second year of teaching at Sullivan Middle School and Sullivan High School in Sullivan, Ind. She is grateful that the farmers who pay into the state’s soybean checkoff program offers the MYCAERT system curriculum to ag teachers across the state. 

“I’m glad the farmers have taken a portion of their money to go toward this,” Williams said. “These are the future producers, the future agriculturalists that we need. This is an opportunity for my students to see the kinds of things they will be doing in the future. We are thankful to the Indiana Soybean Alliance for making this possible.” 

The middle school agriscience curriculum is designed to provide Indiana agricultural educators with the essential tools to stimulate student interest in the field of agriculture. The lessons use an inquiry-based format known as a 5E lesson plan. Each lesson encompasses the following: Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate and Evaluate. 

Within a 5E lesson, there are multiple student activities supporting inquiry-based instruction. This approach provides effective strategies while students learn to conduct investigations and dig further into a topic. Lessons are accompanied with student E-units, online assessments, and PowerPoints. An E-unit is a student textbook unit as it is written to match each lesson. Online assessments are completed by students while reports can display how students are achieving in relationship to academic standards. 

Kevin Cross has been an ag teacher and FFA advisor for 12 years. In August 2024, he took that role at Linton-Stockton High School in Linton, Ind. He was excited to use the MYCAERT curriculum. 

“When the Indiana Soybean Alliance first started funding this and made it available free of charge to ag teachers, I picked it up pretty quick,” Cross said. “I had used some older MYCAERT curriculum that was created a long time ago. When I saw that it was available, and I started looking into it and did a couple of trainings, I thought this would be really good to juice up my middle school curriculum. You can do so many things with this middle school curriculum. I jumped on it pretty quick because it’s good stuff.” 

The middle school agriscience program allows Indiana educators to access a sophisticated curriculum system. Educators, especially agricultural educators, have many responsibilities. Providing additional tools through a paid subscription not only allows for teachers to feel appreciated but provides them with an inquiry-based lessons to strengthen student knowledge. 

“This curriculum is easy to use,” Williams said. “I can go and pick what I want to teach. There are many different options. You can go in and pick what you want; you don’t have to use all of them. The kids like because you can do different things. There’s PowerPoint; there’s worksheets; there’s activities and labs. It gives you the option of hands-on learning, which is really what ag is all about.” 

Click here for more information about the program.