A middle school FFA (Future Farmers of America) program launched in 2025 at Palm Valley Elementary is at the forefront of agricultural education in Arizona.
Palm Valley Elementary, located in Goodyear, is part of the Litchfield Elementary School District. An agriculture program for Palm Valley junior high students was the idea of Cheryl Sawyer, an Agriscience teacher at Arizona Agribusiness and Equine Center (AAEC). She saw potential for students from both schools to practice leadership skills while learning more about urban farming and career exploration.
The program is affiliated with the National FFA Organization, which provides opportunities for agricultural education, leadership development, and career exploration. Very few Middle School FFA programs in the United States have high school students planning and teaching junior high students daily. The Palm Valley program is the sixth FFA organization of its kind in Arizona.
AAEC “student” teachers receive guidance and oversight from two certified agriculture advisors. It’s a one-of-a-kind collaboration with great potential for students to learn from each other.
“I really liked working with the high school teachers because I feel like I could really relate to them, since they were still at a younger age instead of the teachers you usually have who are older,” said Jackson Butler, an eighth-grade Palm Valley student.
Senior AAEC students visit Palm Valley four days a week to teach lessons during the special period to seventh and eighth grade students. They write, teach, and evaluate their curriculum as the year progresses, while encouraging students to participate in regional and state FFA competitions.
Career development and exploration are required components of the Middle School FFA curriculum. The ag (agriculture) program offers several opportunities to help students be aware of and explore potential careers.
Many lessons relate to the 22 FFA Career Development Events or CDEs (competitions in FFA) in Arizona. One lesson AAEC taught at Palm Valley involved testing for milk quality and participating in cheese and milk tastings. This was a hands-on look at future careers in dairy foods, processing, quality control, marketing industries, and food science. A separate lesson in animal identification of antlers, footprints, etc. encouraged students to consider wildlife as a career possibility.
“For me, I’ve always wanted to be an engineer, and once I got into FFA, it showed me that I want to be an agricultural engineer and build machines in agriculture like drones that help fertilize fields,” Butler said.
Two AAEC students successfully wrote a grant last year that awarded $5,500 from the Agua Fria/New River Conservation District to build a “land lab” on the Palm Valley campus. In addition to a chicken coop, the area will include a sustainable garden and composting site. It is currently under construction.
Sawyer sees the joint school venture as an opportunity to be shared for years to come, she said.
“The partnership of our schools is also beneficial to the growth of our community as we collaborate to develop learning opportunities, raise funds, and connect our students in beneficial ways,” she said. “The land lab will provide students with hands-on learning in a non-traditional setting. They can apply traditional subjects to real-world scenarios while developing life skills.”