November 21, 2003

By Tom Nicolette
Director of Media Services

Touching lives and shaping futures. That's what it is all about for high school ag-science teacher Melissa Loerwald.

"My job enables me to touch children's lives and help shape their future," the Florence High School teacher began. "Through agricultural programs and extracurricular programs like the FFA, I'm allowed to channel their energy into something productive for agriculture in the future. (We) allow them to see all the different aspects that agriculture has to give, find their strengths and talents...mold them and direct them out on a path with scholarship money or help them get into college so they can be successful in the future," she said.

Loerwald, 29, knew she wanted to be an ag teacher when she was a junior in high school. Her uncle and father preceded her in the teaching profession. As a matter of fact, her father is her teaching partner in the Florence Ag-Science program, making their situation unique as the only father/daughter teaching team in Texas.

After attending Tarleton State University where she earned a bachelor of science in ag services and development, and a master of science in ag education, Loerwald was on her way to her teaching career.

Now at Florence High School in Central Texas, she teaches freshmen a comprehensive Ag 101 course on business, communications, leadership, food and ag mechanics, and animal science. The school's food technology class allows for utilization of her meat science specialization. Loerwald teaches students about sanitation quality control, wholesale cuts of beef and pork carcasses, and other facets of the meat and food industry as a prerequisite to the Ag-Science Department's pre-employment meat laboratory.

The high school teacher believes one of her greatest rewards is watching a lost, undirected freshman with an interest in agriculture become a mature, responsible, goal-oriented senior.

"I am so excited that every day they (freshmen) are so eager to learn. They're like little sponges (soaking up knowledge)," said Loerwald. "And that spark is lit into the freshmen as they continue into their sophomore and junior year, and then as a very goal-oriented senior. Then they continue on to find a successful career," she said enthusiastically.

She united the Florence FFA with the Williamson County Farm Bureau in an annual Agriculture Trade Show and Farm Safety Day. Loerwald's students have won the State FFA Champion Partner's for a Safer Community Award two consecutive years for their participation in Farm Safety Day.

Outside of her career at Florence High School, Loerwald and her husband, Lance, operate a beef cattle ranch and a wildlife management program. It's all a hands-on experience whether learned on the ranch or at school. "If I learn something at home from production agriculture, I can then implement it in the classroom just to help bring education to life," Loerwald summarized.