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Northern Illinois University

NIU Office of Public Affairs


News Release

Contact: Mark McGowan, NIU Office of Public Affairs
(815) 753-9472

May 28, 2004

NIU’s One-Room Schoolhouse banquet
to honor DeKalb County Farm Bureau

DeKalb — Friends of Northern Illinois University’s One-Room Schoolhouse will honor the DeKalb County Farm Bureau for its longstanding commitment to education during a June 11 banquet.

Guests at the fundraiser in support of the One-Room Schoolhouse also can view some or all of a photo exhibit honoring farm women, which permanently hangs in the farm bureau’s headquarters along Peace Road in Sycamore.

The banquet and cash bar – from 6 to 11 p.m. Friday, June 11, in the Regency Room of the Holmes Student Center – will include a silent auction, featuring such items as African art, antiques, a camping weekend, a ride in an antique airplane, a quilt and four tickets for a 2004 Huskies football game.

Tickets are $50 per person, or $400 per table. For more information, or to make a reservation, call (815) 753-1561.

During their century of existence in DeKalb County from the mid-1800s to the late 1950s, one-room schools enjoyed a close bond with farms. Many of the students lived on farms, and it was not uncommon for boys to miss school during the planting and harvest seasons.

Now, nearly half a century after the last one-room school closed its doors, farmers must take the responsibility of keeping agriculture in the lesson plans in local classrooms: Agribusiness also has modernized, farm bureau manager Doug Dashner said, and fewer and fewer children live on farms.

Consequently, he said, the mission to promote agricultural education in local schools is critical.

“These are the consumers of tomorrow. These are the policymakers and decision makers of tomorrow,” Dashner said. “They need to have a basic understanding of how important agriculture is to our history, how woven it is into our fabric.”

Farmers visit every school in the county to teach children about everything agriculture, from job creation (one in six jobs is ag-related, Dashner said) and production cycles to the creation of nutritious food. High school students can attend agriculture careers workshops.

DeKalb County’s farm bureau staff work with students in NIU’s teacher preparation programs to ensure the new graduates can bring the lessons of the modern-day farm to their pupils by training them on the available classroom resources and supplying them with lesson plans that meet state-developed learning goals.

Teachers already in the classroom receive in-service training, and the farm bureau also is offering a summer agricultural institute worth three hours of NIU credit. The two-month program in May and June offers tours of farms and agribusinesses as well as help developing programs and materials for the classroom.

“It’s a small part of what we do,” Dashner said, “but somebody’s got to teach it to them.”

The photo exhibit, created a couple decades ago by then-NIU graduate student Terry Sheahan, found a permanent home in the farm bureau within the last two years after it “made the circuit” of museums and elsewhere, including the historic Ellwood House.

Its several pictures depict farm women as “lifelong helpmates,” showing them feeding the family, maintaining the home, working and playing games with friends and tending the fields and the livestock.

“It was put in archives,” Dashner said. “We said, ‘We have some walls out here. Maybe we could continue to have people enjoy this display.’ ”

For more information on the farm bureau, or to view the entire photo exhibit or the massive 1996 wood carving by local artist Joe Dillett, call (815) 756-6361 or visit www.dekalbfarmbureau.org online.

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