This year, the Kent County Farm Bureau Promotion and Education Committee focused on developing a Career Fair booth that made it easy and fun to open conversations with students about the broad array of agriculture jobs. Renee McCauley and Annie Link cast the vision: Picture Yourself in Agriculture.
The key to the vision: a photo booth app with virtual background replacement. We organized the interactive activity around the Michigan Farm Bureau career cards that connect things that students like to do with ag careers that use those skills and interests. Over the winter we found Simplebooth and populated it with agriculture backgrounds: dairy cows in a barn, greenhouse interior, wheat field with a drone, ag classroom, research lab, meeting with an elected official, tractor cab, tractor repair shop, and grain silo. We gathered props that people would use while doing those jobs, like beakers, wrenches, hard hats, safety vests, aprons, vet jackets, and even shoulder-length plastic gloves. Renee found a cabinet that could contain all the props and serve as a stand for the iPad photo booth. And we were off!
We debuted the activity at the Caledonia High School Career Fair, which draws students from 6 area schools. Emily Miller and Faith Bibbler of Dairy Discovery and Natalie Hart, KCFB's County Administrative Manager were the first to try it out. The students had a great time picking out props and backgrounds, and the app let them download the photo they just took so they had a lasting memento. And the name of the booth made for a great conversation starter: “Have you ever pictured yourself in agriculture?” If the answer is no, then the MFB materials provided a perfect second question, “What are you good at? What do you like to do?”
The photo booth was an automatic attraction, and we were able to talk about the wide array of ag jobs, so the concept was borne out. Renee and Annie took the booth to Lowell High School, and Renee took it to two middle schools, tweaking the props and presentation after each time.
Then it faced its biggest test: the West Michigan Works’ event that draws over 8,300 area middle and high schoolers, MiCareerQuest.
MiCareerQuest takes place in DeVos Place, and exhibitors go all out: the health care quadrant had an actual ambulance, manufacturing had a welding section where students could actually do some welding, a nursery had them potting up plants to take home. We knew we had to go big, so Dairy Discovery lent us Kaycee, the life-size fiberglass cow that students can actually milk.
To say that Kaycee was a hit is an understatement. Students raced towards her and we had a near-constant line to milk her for the 8:30am-1:45pm run of the Quest. Annie and Scott Drown had both grown up on dairy farms, so they were able to add a personal connection and share their experiences. Allan Robinette and Natalie rounded out the booth staffing.
We took 120 photos that day that contained 314 students. The dairy cow backdrop was by far the most popular, with the greenhouse, legislative advocacy, and tractor repair shop nearly tied for second. We interacted with at least 1,300 students at Kaycee.
Between all 5 career fairs, we had the chance to share the message about ag jobs with students from around 100 middle and high schools from Kent and surrounding counties. And it will continue working over the summer at Dairy Discovery’s Cow Camps. If you would like to host Picture Yourself in Ag at an event or class, please contact the county office ([email protected], 616-784-1092).