COURTESY Photograph
The Santa Maria School Agriculture Education Program has been named No. 1 Inside the state by California Agriculture Teachers Affiliation. From left are Luis Guerra, Kimura Yamamoto, Melissa Flory, Sara Araujo, Clemente Ayon, Amanda Rodriguez, Shannon Powell, Mark Powell, Michael Guerra, Marc Debernardi and Superintendent Antonio Garcia.

The Santa Maria Highschool Agriculture Education Program is Definitely one of the biggest Inside the state.

That’s Based mostly on the California Agriculture Teachers Affiliation, which gave it the No. 1 rating As a Outcome of the 2021 CATA Excellent Agricultural Education Program.

The current digital recognition was introduced On the CATA’s summer time convention. 

Collectively with This method being honored, Shannon Powell who has taught for 12 yrs (9 at Santa Maria Highschool), was chosen as a CATA Teacher of Excellence. This award Is predicated on expert and scholar actions, group involvement and the teachers’ instructional program Inside the classroom setting.

The Saint Ag Program acquired its No. 1 rating As a Outcome of of its achievements in classroom instruction, experiential studying, the FFA scholar group and management enchancment, group partnership and the teachers’ expert enchancment.

To earn this honor, the agriculture division submitted its software to the CATA, which wAs a Outcome of then ratingd by a committee of agriculture educators from throughout California, Based mostly on a information launch. 

There are 340 agriculture Education schemes in California with Santa Maria FFA being the state’s largest. By way of the 2020-2021 school yr, This method had 10 agriculture teachers who served 1,087 scholars, who have been enrolled in 49 sections of agriculture packages. 

The current district agriculture teachers are division chair Mark Powell, Marc DeBernardi, Luis Guerra, Clemente Ayon, Melissa Flory, Amanda Rodriguez, Shannon Powell, Sara Araujo, Kimura Yamamoto and Michael Guerra. 

The Agriculture Department provides 5 pathways to The scholars together with agriscience, ornamental horticulture, agriculture mechanics, animal science and agrienterprise. Every pathway has packages That are particularly designed To permit scholars to study by doing and to make a connection to our native agriculture enterprise.

Furthermore, there are 5 packages provided that permit scholars to earn concurrent enrollment credit rating at Allan Hancock School. 

Every scholar Inside the agriculture program is a member of the California and Nationwide FFA groups. 

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