Ag Education Teachers Are in Demand Across North Dakota, South Dakota and Minnesota

Gary Wald knew that farming was not an option when he returned to North Dakota in 1972 from a stint in the Army during the Vietnam War, so he started an agricultural career that he considered the best thing.

“My dad was only 42-years-old and my younger brother wanted to farm with him so I had to do something else. I said 'I'm going into ag education so I can be involved in agriculture,’” Wald said.

Wald, then-26, taught agricultural education classes for the next several decades, beginning his career in 1974 at Lake Area Career and Technology Center in Devils Lake, North Dakota, before moving to Maddock, North Dakota , in 1977 where he taught at Maddock High School for nine years.

In 1988 Wald pivoted from his career in agricultural education to sell farm insurance, but he missed teaching. So in 1998 he resumed the career at Four Winds High School in Fort Totten, North Dakota, where he taught for five years. In 2003, Wald returned to Maddock to teach agricultural education.

Wald, now 75, is retiring in spring 2023 after a total of 37 years of teaching agricultural education in North Dakota. His retirement leaves an opening for an agricultural education teacher, one of 14 in that field in high schools and at career and technology centers across the state.

Agricultural education has seen major changes in the nearly 40 years since Wald has been teaching.

“When I started it was ‘Cows and plows and sows,' but now, it’s agricultural science, it’s natural resources. It's really expanded,” Wald said.

Now he uses technology, including drones, Versaz lasers and 3-D printers in his classroom to teach his classes.

Wald’s profession has changed not only in terms of what is taught, but also in the number of programs in North Dakota and across the northern Plains. His career also illustrates the marketable skills that agricultural education teaches, which demonstrates why the number of programs have grown, leading to many unfilled positions in the state and in South Dakota, Minnesota and across the entire United States.

“We’re all experiencing this,” said Adam Marx, North Dakota State University associate professor and program evaluation specialist. “I think if we look at just the landscape of the teacher shortage in agricultural education, nationwide, we are roughly in the same position we were 10 years ago.”

While those shortages had been the result of retirements, in 2023, retirement is not the most common reason that positions are available across the northern Plains.

Instead, many of the agricultural education jobs that are available in North Dakota, South Dakota and Minnesota are the result of the addition of programs at high schools and career technical centers or expansion of existing programs.

In North Dakota about a dozen agricultural education teaching positions have been added in the past nine years, Marx said.

“Of course, that contributes to demand,” he said.

“Agricultural education has emerged in communities that didn’t have agricultural education, previously,” Marx said. “It has expanded because of demand, and it has replaced industrial arts and technical education positions, and that has created more positions.”

The agricultural education landscape is similar in Minnesota.

“The demand is just crazy. It’s unreal,” said Nathan Purrington, agricultural education lead at University of Minnesota Crookston. “I have had several emails and phone calls saying we’re adding or having an opening in their programs.”

Source:jamestownsun.com