Launched for the 2017-2018 schoolyear and delivered by the Agriculture Alliance of New Brunswick (AANB), the Agriculture in the Classroom New Brunswick (AITC-NB) program has had a busy year of community engagement and providing resources to New Brunswick teachers and students.
Career education has been the main focus of this year’s programming. New graduation requirements that focus on career education has increased speaking events and career fairs, from elementary to high school.
“The Future Pathways event in Salisbury that we have participated in the last few years, expanded into a three-day event, adding Caledonia High School and Tantramar High school,” says Charlotte Flores, AITC-NB manager. “There has been a new partnership with Jolly Farmer where we have supported facility tours for students in AG110 from both Woodstock and Nackawic.”
AITC-NB is getting its Spuds in the Tub program ready for summer and going through applications for next year’s Little Green Thumbs program. At the end of March, they added Mackenzie Roherty to the team. A former classroom teacher, Mackenzie is taking over the AITC-NB bilingual coordinator role as well as leading the Little Green Thumbs and Little Green Sprouts programs.
“This is a great opportunity to support teachers in both the Anglophone and Francophone school districts,” says Flores.
Each year, AITC-NB creates a new resource for Canadian Agriculture Literacy Month. The March 2025 offering was the NB Maple Discovery Kit. This resource was created with the support of teacher Heather Robinson from Rothesay Elementary School and provides teachers with curriculum-linked activities, worksheets and N.B.-specific information. It also includes books, a poster, a maple treat and a spile donated by Lapierre. AITC-NB mailed 110 kits and the resource is also available through the teacher resource library found on the AITC-NB and AITC-Canada websites.
AITC-NB also enhanced its career fair booth with a new focus on technology and digital skills. Students have the opportunity to drive a robot around a course and complete a task.
“We highlight that by 2030, 100,000 jobs in agriculture in Canada will be replaced with automation,” says Flores. “This creates new jobs in maintaining the tech, designing and programming of it.”
AITC-NB was the charity of choice for the Provincial Exhibition in 2024. It hosted a special event for preschool students that brought in over 100 children for a barn tour; and to make seed necklaces and bracelets, work with the artist in residence and watch the dog show. It was a great event with lots of support, says Flores.
In November of 2024, AITC-NB hosted the first in-person Little Green Thumbs training for both new and returning teachers. “The two-day event was a great opportunity for collaboration,” says Flores. “We brought in trainers from Manitoba and Saskatchewan and were joined by staff from AITC-PEI.”
The Soil Your T-shirt initiative is a collaboration between Agriculture and Agri-Foods Canada, AITC-NB and Living Lab New Brunswick. Forty-three students from the AG110 class in Oromocto came to the AAFC facility to participate in the Soil Your T-Shirt initiative in 2024 and to be exposed to the numerous types of agricultural careers at the centre.
“The Soil Your T-shirt program was devised to have shirts planted in three types of soil, and to compare if the types of soil impacted the decomposition of the organic material,” explains Flores. “Students took soil samples at each site and even used GPS to help find the locations. They then toured the facility and spoke to several researchers who showcased the projects and discussed their career journeys.”
By the numbers
Part of AITC-Canada, the national voice for agriculture education with a vision for agriculture in every classroom and inspiring every student, AITC-NB acts to engage N.B. students and educators to enhance their knowledge of agriculture and food.
In 2024-2025, program volunteers delivered 2,466 resources and 99,519 student experiences. The program currently has 86 Little Green Thumbs gardens in the province, serving 3,221 students. Since early April, they have done seven classroom presentations and five career events.
Learn more on the AITC-NB website www.aitc-aec-nb.ca and follow it on Facebook www.facebook.com/AITC.AEC.NB or YouTube @agricultureintheclassroomnb.
Financial support was provided under the Sustainable Canadian Agricultural Partnership, a federal-provincial-territorial initiative.
