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- Main Street in Medford looks like many rural communities...
home to the Taylor County courthouse...
and is surrounded by farm country.
- Medford is fairly rural.
- So, maybe it's not surprising when you walk into
Lisa Kopps' high school class that you find this.
[chick chirping]
- If you have a chick right now.
Can you perch it on your finger?
You can see how they have the desirable instinct
to just want to perch.
I did not grow up on a farm.
Ever since I was little, I had a really big passion for animals.
Chicks are flock animals, right?
- It's a passion Lisa passes on to her students,
and most of them didn't grow up on a farm either.
- I'll have a class of about 25 to 30.
Only about 2 to 3 kids are still on that production farm.
So youth, even in this rural community,
are almost two generations removed from that farm.
- Putting these kids back on the farm
is just steps away from their traditional classroom.
- All right, hey, you guys, let's go to the barn.
- It's a really fun thing to be able to come to school
and know that, "Hey, you're going to the barn today."
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- This is the Medford High School barn.
- They're expected to be over here when class starts
and they get back to the building
when their next class starts.
- We have chickens,
a calf,
pig,
sheep,
rabbit,
and one cat. [Scratch]
They're very comfortable with us.
Hi! - There you go.
Loosen it and get it over two ears.
- Lisa saw the problem.
- If we expect farmers to continue
in this next generation,
we need to teach them.
Good job!
- And the solution. - Good girl.
- We need to show them what tasks,
literally, need to be done to be that farmer.
This is our bull calf we have here at school.
It's more engaging for students to learn
if you actually have the animal.
And this barn is engaging.
[Bull calf whuffles]
- You can put some more feed into here.
Good job, girls.
- [Chicken clucking]
- They have to collect eggs every day.
Chickens, they lay eggs about every two days.
And we need to go collect those.
We sell those at school.
They get a grade for doing chores.
That's part of their class expectations:
that they wear rubber boots,
and they get in there and use a pitchfork,
and they feed them, they water them,
and they move them around, they lead them.
Walk him down the road, stretch his legs a little bit.
- It's a lesson most of these students won't get at home,
or anywhere else.
- Lisa Kopp: This project is extremely unique.
There are not a lot of schools that have a farm.
So, the farm itself is run by high schoolers.
It's owned by the district.
- As the number of Wisconsin farms continues to dwindle,
Lisa sees this hands-on classroom becoming all the more important.
- And get used to that being on her head.
Yep, so if you want to put it on her feet.
- We consume vegetables, we consume meat,
and do you know where your meat's coming from?
We need to show the students that
"Hey, some of these tasks-- raising sheep, raising pork,
"raising beef cattle--
"you can do on a small scale at home."
So, this is Marvin.
He's a red and white Holstein.
And he is growing really well.
There are so many life lessons
that can be learned on a farm setting.
And I'm trying to replicate that farm setting here,
in this school farm.
- If one barn is good...
two barns must be better.
- We're building a new barn
where my classroom will be next year.
So, we're going to have to already expand the barn
that we just finished building
because of the student numbers going up,
and the demand for another Ag teacher.
Can you see how, over time,
the lamb, it's kind of getting it?
It learns to not fight it,
is relaxing a little bit more.
- Lisa sees it as securing the future for farming
and the community that rallied around her dream.
- Oh, my gosh.
The Medford community has been so helpful.
And they do see the need for this education,
because a lot of the youth are not on the farm.
They're not thinking of these career paths and their future.
- I actually donated six pigs to this project
because I feel strongly about it.
I'm really happy that she made it happen.
She's such a huge role model.
- It is for our next generation.
And if we don't show them how to do these things,
they're not going to do it.
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