Making the Grade: DeKalb school takes hooves out of urban 4-H program

For details about 4-H, go to 4-h.org. Information about Sequyoah Middle: sequoyahms.dekalb.k12.ga.us

If the mention of “4-H” brings to mind kids raising sheep and planting vegetables, think again. Though the nonprofit organization has its roots in rural communities, it is now an extensive, national program that partners with the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, land-grant universities such as the University of Georgia and county governments to involve more than 6 million school-aged kids in a range of projects that have nothing to do with livestock.

In the metro area, 4-H is blossoming at the 1,500-student Sequoyah Middle School in Doraville, a town inside the Perimeter where cows and chickens are few and far between.

“Farm animals are things our kids have never seen before,” said Lauren Ruehman, a physical science teacher at Sequoyah who sponsors the 4-H Club. “They have no exposure to that. So we’ve taken a 4-H program and urbanized it.”

Contemporary 4-H clubs can pick from a variety of curriculum designed to reach kids where they live, said Ruehman. And all the activities are free.

“4-H started as a very rural agricultural club, and there are still some aspects to that,” she explained. “We do learn about food products in Georgia, for instance. But we’re encouraged to tailor our programs. We now focus more on science-based activities and life-based skills - things they don’t learn in school but are still relevant.”

The Sequoyah club has undertaken projects around coding and computer science, how to manage finances and the effects of using drugs. Those sorts of relevant topics have rejuvenated a club that was dormant when Ruehman got to Sequoyah three years ago.

“We’ve completely rebooted it,” she said. “We now have about 40 students participating in activities that take place during and after school.”

One of the most popular projects takes older students to the adjacent Reynolds Elementary school where they tutor youngsters in math and reading. They also tend the school’s fishery where rainbow trout are raised from eggs, then transplanted into the Chattahoochee River to repopulate it.

“This is the third year we’ve done that, and it’s been a lot of fun,” said Ruehman. “We raise the trout in our outdoor classroom until they reach about 4 or 5 inches. Then the kids deliver them to the Chattahoochee. Along the way, they raise them, take care of them, graph their progress and learn about water quality.”

Club members have also organized and taken responsibility for a school-wide recycling program, overseen by eighth-grader Sophia Yang, who joined the club at the beginning of the school year.

“I’d just moved here, and when I heard about the club, decided to join,” she said. “I like tutoring the kids in the outreach program and running the recycling program. That gives me better leadership skills. I’m also more confident when I have to do presentations because the club helps me work on my speaker skills.”