Husband, wife team helps school ag program expand

PEOTONE, Ill. — A lot of growth has occurred in the agricultural department at Peotone High School since Abby Cowger started teaching and advising the FFA chapter in 2018.

“The school had decided to cut the ag program for the fall of 2018, but we have a lot of community support here, so they approached the school board and said this is not what we want,” she said. “Our superintendent invited me for an interview and we talked about what had happened.”

Prior to Cowger becoming the Peotone ag teacher, the program had little consistency.

“From 2010 to 2018, there were eight or nine ag teachers,” she said. “I remember the first officer team, I said I don’t know how good I’ll be, but I promise I’ll be here next year because I want to build something and I think we have built something.”

About 45 kids were enrolled in ag classes during Cowger’s first year of teaching.

“Now we have 208 kids which is about half of the school population,” she said. “It was overwhelming being the only teacher the first couple of years.”

In 2022, two weeks after Abby married Dakota Cowger, the couple approached the school about adding a second ag teacher to the program.

“By the end of the month, he was hired,” Abby said.

“We dated when we were at Illinois State University together and my family farm is here,” Dakota said. “I grew up on our dairy farm where we have a 70-cow Holstein herd and 3,500 acres of corn and soybeans.”

The ag teachers are developing pathways for the ag classes.

“We have intro to ag and foods so a lot of freshmen and sophomores take those classes,” Abby said. “We have an animal pathway that includes animal science and vet science, a plant pathway that includes horticulture and crop science, we have our ag mechanics pathway and next year we’re starting an ag engineering class.”

For the foods pathway, students have the opportunity to take the Farm to Fork One class, Farm to Fork Two class, Global Foods in Ag for Developing Countries and Global Foods in Ag for Developed Countries.

“We have kids that are from other countries so they teach whatever country we’re on,” Abby said. “Last year, Lindsay Villalobos took over the Mexico unit and taught the class her family traditions and family recipes.”

Next year, students at Peotone High School will be able to enroll in dual-credit classes with Joliet Junior College.

“Dakota is getting his master’s degree so we’re pretty excited to offer dual-credit classes because we don’t have any right now,” Abby said.

Another exciting addition next year for the school will be junior high ag classes and the expansion of the program with a third ag teacher, Carmen Trotta.

“All seventh- and eighth-grade students will have a quarter of agriculture and Carmen will also teach two food classes,” Abby said. “Kids really like the hands-on experiences, so if you can bring learning to life, that’s when the magic happens.”

The Peotone FFA Chapter organizes many activities throughout the year, including the plant sale May 8-10.

Annuals, perennials, vegetables, hanging baskets and some houseplants will be available for purchase.

Each December, the chapter has a Wreaths Across Peotone event, similar to the Wreaths Across America program.

“We make and donate 100-plus wreaths to put out at our cemetery in town for veterans,” Abby said.

For a student’s Supervised Agricultural Experience project, the Peotone FFA members packaged 52,000 meals and donated them to food pantries across a seven-county area.

“Our food pantry is open every other week on Wednesdays, but we just started doing a collaboration with them to open the food pantry on Sundays of those weeks to better fit people’s work schedules,” Abby said. “We have a crew of kids that help with that.”

For more than 20 years, the Plow for a Cause event is held every August. Anyone is welcome to bring their plows and antique tractors to participate.

“All the money raised through our concessions that day goes to a cause in our community and it’s never picked until right before the event,” Abby said.

“Last year, one of our student’s house burned down so we donated the money to that family,” she said. “The event use to be Plow for a Cure and the money went for cancer research, but we wanted the money to stay where it can impact people locally.”

The Alumni Auction at Peotone is held every February.

“There is an auctioneer and one or two alumni members and the rest of the work is handled by our kids,” Dakota said. “That gives the kids good experience with customer service and working as a team.”

At the auction, people purchase experiences for FFA members such as attending the Washington Leadership Conference, Illinois FFA Convention and National FFA Convention or buying a FFA jacket.

“For most of the things kids attend, they are not charged,” Abby said. “At state FFA convention, we pay for the registration, hotel room and one or two meals. That makes it an even playing field for all our kids.”

“We have not had a kid buy an FFA jacket in five or six years,” Dakota said. “We had 46 FFA jackets donated from the community this year.”

PIE Night, which stands for Personal Interview Experience, was started this year at Peotone to help kids develop proficiency and job interview skills.

“We have alumni do mock interviews,” Dakota said. “Then we serve pie afterwards which is a fun little treat.”

Focusing on the start of the junior high ag program is important for both Dakota and Abby.

“I think that changes how the program works,” Dakota said.

“We won’t know until we get about three years down the line when we have the first seventh-grade class as freshman students,” Abby said. “That will be a telling year for how it changes my curriculum because at the junior high level every week is going to be a different topic.”

For long-term goals, Abby said, the dream is some sort of storefront to sell items from students’ SAE projects such as garlic, pumpkins or beef.

“Having the farm-to-retail experience for the kids would be very cool,” she said.