As well as offering farm visits and classroom talks to young people, RHET also offer teachers the opportunity to upskill and learn more about food, farming and the working countryside. Some of these opportunities are online whilst others involve getting groups out onto farms and provide the opportunity to hear direct from the farmer about what they do and ask any questions they may have.  The learning from our training can be taken back into the classroom and shared with learners.  A recent example of this was a teacher training event at Stewart Towers Dairy just outside Perth delivered by RHET Perth and Kinross.  Thanks to funding from Education Scotland to deliver training for teachers around science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) we were able to offer a farm tour complete with ice cream tasting and a pot to use in school to make some butter back in school. 

Those attending the session have provided the following quotes

‘Inspiring. Hadn't considered how farming/agriculture could be used as a source for teaching technological subjects.’

‘I had a great experience at the dairy farm teacher training. Really interesting and useful session to support classroom learning and the farm visit. Ice cream was a bonus!’

‘Excellent tour, very informative linking to teaching and learning. Lots of ideas we can now create and link to lessons. A lot of pupils we teach are interested in going into the farming industry so this help interest pupils about the subject and allow them to see how our subject fits in with careers.’

All the training we offer is supplemented by learning resources and after the farm tour we ran through the support available to teach STEM topics in the classroom.

You can gain an insight into the training session by taking a listen to our short podcast and if you feel inspired to come along to a future session, please visit https://www.rhet.org.uk/teachers/career-long-professional-learning/ to find out more

To listen to audio from the visit click here.