Kim Weller and Lauren Amor are agricultural teachers at Yanco Agricultural High School.

A ONE off program bringing school teachers to the Intercollegiate Meat Judging conference has been expanded, with hopes for it to become a regular fixture at annual conference.

The program started as a group project with Advancing Beef Leaders (ABL), bringing school teachers to the ICMJ conference in Rockhampton earlier this year. It was then extended to bring teachers to the bigger conference at Wagga Wagga last week.

ICMJ has been one of the defining influences in Rebecca Bennett’s life.

“We pitched it as a professional development initiative for teachers in the industry to strengthen their understanding of the Australian red meat industry,” said Rebecca Bennett, one of the ABL group members behind the initiative.

Ms Bennett has long been a participant in ICMJ, entering her first meat judging competition as a high school student and continuing it into her career in the meat processing industry. She said ICMJ was a great opportunity to the education and meat industry’s closer.

“We wanted to build a program that was really engaging for the teachers and was manageable because our hope is to further expand this initiative.

“We really wanted to help them increase their understanding of the entire red meat supply chain and improve their confidence in integrating that industry knowledge back into their curriculum.

“Another layer was we wanted the teacher’s to be able to share with their students the many and varied career pathways that are available in the red meat industry.”

Kim Weller and Lauren Amor teach at Yanco Agricultural High School in New South Wales where ag is a compulsory subject for Years 7-10.

The two teachers were sponsored by the Australian Beef Industry Foundation and ABL to attend and take part in the ICMJ National Conference and Competition in Wagga Wagga.

Ms Weller has been teaching ag at Yanco Agricultural High School for 17 years and said this was her first opportunity to do professional development with industry.

“It’s been an incredible opportunity to really be part of the industry and to be involved in something that a lot of our students are interested in,” Miss Weller said.

“This is the industry that a lot of students want to go into so to be able to teach them the skills and information they need is really important.”

(To learn more about ICMJ, see the recent episode of The Week in Beef)

Game-changing experience

Ms Amor teaches the Year 10 beef production unit currently and said it had been a game-changing experience.

“To be able to be in a room with so many enthusiastic young people and hear from people that are in the industry and involved in research and development has been extremely valuable,” Miss Amor said.

“I couldn’t write it all down fast enough, we got so many insights that we can take back to our students so that if they go out in the industry, they know the most up-to-date information on trends, challenges, the connection between other industries and overseas markets.”

One of the highlights of being involved with ICMJ was the connections made with industry people and organisations Miss Weller explained.

“I have met a lot of people here and I am hoping this opens doors for our students, so if we wanted to take our students to a feedlot or processing facility, we have that connection now,” she said.

“Hopefully it will make access to industry easier because they know us and not just for this year but for future years too.”

Miss Amor said while she always knew there was a lot of opportunities in agriculture, ICMJ had exposed an even wider variety of opportunities.

“I think the more that you are exposed to it at events like this, it reminds you there is something for everyone’s skill set and it impacts how you deliver a course to the kids and how you promote industry,” she said.

“So, if there’s kids that love data analysis, they can go into research. Kids that might be really good at gaming could look into the tech and development side of industry. I think this has shown me there is a career for everyone.

“I think as ag teachers, we’ve got the best job in the world to be the link between kids and their futures, if they choose ag.”