Blue Hill Vocational Agriculture Instructor and FFA Advisor, Melissa Bonifas, recently joined 17 other specially selected agricultural instructors from across the United States for a week of new experiences at the National Agriscience Teacher Ambassador Academy held at Chesepeake Farms near Chestertown, Maryland. The program focused on how to incorporate inquiry-based instruction and higher-level science principles into the existing ag curricula. The academy also focused on the scientific aspects of agriculture — specifically, environmental issues like biofuels and renewable energy resources, physics and food safety issues.
The academy was sponsored by DuPont, a global company dealing in science-based products and services, and supported by Lab-Aids, a vendor of educational resource materials. The week included tours of the Delaware Biotechnology Institute and DuPont Labs.
Bonifas, 33, who has taught Agricultural classes at the Blue Hill Public Schools for 9 years, is now tasked with working with her peers to integrate science education into the ag classroom. Bonifas was given a variety of educational resources, ideas and techniques to integrate into the classroom.
Bonifas expects the inquiry based learning model to lead to significant academic retention in students. Bonifas feels that the key to the model is to assist the students in ways for them to discover the answers based upon their own questions and reasoning process.
This fall, Bonifas will deliver a workshop at the National FFA convention in Indianapolis,
Ind., and at the national conference of the National Association of Agricultural Educators in Nashville, Tenn.
Bonifas lives near Blue Hill with her husband, Troy, and 2-year-old daughter, Aiden.
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