Well, I have arrived back to Onarga safe and sound. I joke that I came back to work to rest. It was a wonderful conference and look forward to maybe going to Baltimore, Maryland next year. I decided that I needed a little downtime on Friday evening, so I did not blog. Here is a recap of Friday and Saturday.

On Friday morning we began with breakfast at 7 a.m. These were the state breakfast. Each state had their own table. You could pick whatever table you wanted to go to where you learned about agriculture in their state. Each table tried to get you to come to their table by having lots of "goodies" for those who sat at their table. I joined the Utah table. I learned that Utah is the Bee State. They have more native bees than honeybees. Our goodies included a nutrition curriculum, honey, a Utah truffle, shelf stable milk, Goldfish (Pepridge Farms is in Utah), a bee poster, a brownie mix, and more! After learning about Utah's agriculture we heard from Dr. Jim Painter, Chair of the School of Family & Consumer Sciences at Eastern Illinois University. His documentary titled "Portion Size Me" talks about making healty fast food choices. Visit http://www.eiu.edu/~famsci/portionsizeme/PSMindex.php to see more about "Portion Size Me".

Next we had the opportunity to attend various workshops on a wide variety of topics. The first session I attended was called "Agriculture Puts the Bio into Biotech". Chris Fleming of Tennessee gave us some great activities we can do with students to teach biotechnology. We even got to extract some DNA from ourselves and see it in a dish.

The second session I went to was "An Ag Day? Why?" conducted by Mary Ann Kelsey of Oklahoma. She is a principal at a private elementary/middle school. We learned how to approach administrators and "sell" our program and resources to them.

Next came lunch. We had a great Grilled Chicken salad and mousse that was to die for. During lunch we were able to hear from the five award winning teachers from across the United States and what they are doing in their classrooms.

Following lunch we had another workshop. I attended one called "Ag Literacy in Today's Classroom". Herbert Parks of Tennessee is a Kindergarten teacher. He talked about some great books that can be used in the classroom that teach agriculture to kids. He also gave some activities to go along with them. Research shows that reading a book does little to help a student retain what is read. If you add an activity to the story, the retention is about 75%-90% greater.

We were treated with a snack in the afternoon that consisted of some St. Louis favorites including Fitz's root beer, jumbo pretzels, and Ted Drewes Frozen Custard. We were also treated to hand massages using soybean lotions.

The final workshop of the day was a mini workshop (45 minutes instead of 90 minutes). During this session I learned about North Carolina Sweet Potatoes. I learned of the North Carolina Sweet Potato Commissions's CSPI (Carolina Sweet Potato Investigation) project and heard from a teacher who is using their curriculum. Her class has even adopted a sweet potato field. See their efforts at www.ncsweetpotatoes.com.

We had a free evening on Friday night. Several people went to the Cardinals came. Me being a true Cubs fan couldn't bring myself to go (that and the high heat and humidity). I opted instead for a nice relaxing meal with a few of my fellow Illinois coordinators at the Top of the Riverfront restaurant at the top of our hotel. This is a restaurant that revolves so you see the wonderful sights of the St. Louis riverfront. It takes 90 minutes to make a complete revolution. We started out in the daytime, but after 2 full revolutions we were able to see the sights in their night beauty as well.

Saturday was our final day. We began early with coffee (even I drank coffee as I was so tired at this point). I attended another mini workshop. This time I heard Emily White, a media specialist from Alabama, speak on a project done with her elementary students. Many of her students thought french fries came from McDonalds and wool sweaters came from the store. She revealed some great books that help students know where different products come from and the project she did with those students.

Our final workshop of the conference was listening to Rose Judd-Murray of Utah. She taught us how to find a plethora of resources using the National Teacher Resource Directory.

Our conference concluded with a closing brunch where we heard about plans for the 2010 conference in Baltimore, Maryland and the 2011 conference in Florida. We also heard from noted children's book author and illustrator, Gail Gibbons. She spoke on her experiences as a writer and talked about her books.

After that it was home to see my family who I missed dearly. This was a great conference. I was glad to be able to share these experiences with Deb Talbert, Iroquois West 1st Grade Teacher, who also had a great time. I hope that you have enjoyed this blog of my travels. Maybe next year you will want to join me in Maryland where the theme is "Pioneers of Ag...Sailing into the Future". Watch for more details.

If you have any questions about this conference please feel free to contact me at alchandl@illinois.edu or at 815-268-4051.