Hands-on instruction

Genesee agriculture science instructor J.R. Morrow grasped a flopping tilapia in his hand and pressed its nose to his lab coat, dropping a bead of red dye to the fish's exposed underbelly.

It is a sex-identification technique Morrow teaches his aquaculture students - the dye better reveals the fish's genitalia. On Tuesday, Morrow's two-student class farmed fish from a small-pool-sized aquaponics tank in the welding shop of Genesee Jr./Sr. High School,

sexing the fish themselves and transferring them to smaller tanks for breeding.

The fish slipped easily from students' hands, spraying water droplets as they went. Hold them incorrectly and "you get the real red stuff coming out," Morrow said. "It will poke you pretty good."

Aquaculture is just one of several hands-on, technical training classes Morrow teaches daily as the school's sole agriculture instructor. He also teaches life science, advanced welding, small engines, forestry and agriculture greenhouse classes to junior and high school students, and he leads the school's intercurricular National FFA Organization chapter. Morrow's classrooms span further than the brick and mortar walls where his students learn agriculture leadership skills and do FFA business. Most of his hands-on teaching happens outdoors or in the shop.

His forestry students plant and prune evergreens, hemlock, willow trees and maples on a small "living land lab" that hugs the outside of the school. Indoors, seventh-graders learn to raise and identify chicks living in pens, aquaculture students tend to hydroponic systems and welding students do metal fabrication.

Despite how they prepare high school students for real-world jobs, the industrial arts are dying across some schools, Morrow said. Still, he said, the Genesee School District has been supportive of his efforts to build a strong program at the rural school.

The state of Idaho houses all high school vocational education - agriculture education, industrial arts and business technology - under the umbrella of career and technical education, Morrow said.

Genesee currently offers two arms of the program. But Morrow said program costs have made it increasingly more difficult for smaller schools to offer more than two CTE options to their students, while a lack of programs to train teachers in the industrial arts and the increasing appeal of online courses have all affected how schools offer hands-on learning. At the same time, technology has been incorporated into the program in a positive way, through the use of personal laptops for students and new welding tools, Morrow said.

"This school district has been nothing but supportive of this program, and that's why I'm still here," Morrow said. "That's why I've made it 17 years is because the administrators have supported me. I hear horror stories across the state of funding cuts and administrative issues, so it's kind of scary."

Sara Trees, president of the school's FFA chapter, said FFA is an organization for both town and farm children at Genesee. The appeal has been strong enough to sink down her own sibling line. Trees was inspired to join by her older sister. Now her younger sister wants to join. At the head of it all is Morrow.

"He's like the fun uncle of the program," Trees said, adding later, "He really brings it together and gets students interested."

After two decades teaching agriculture and 17 years instructing at Genesee, Morrow said he has enjoyed seeing students grow from start to finish in the program. And the job is never stagnant.

"There's a new challenge every day," he said. "I get to move from the classroom to the lab in every class. Seeing student success inside and outside the classroom is a big one, and seeing the growth from kids that start in the program and end in the program, the difference."

Taylor Nadauld can be reached at (208) 883-4630, by email to tnadauld@dnews.com and on Twitter @tnadauldarg.