Klecker Provides 29 Years of Agriculture Teaching

By Sarah Watson, Livestock Editor
Thursday, December 28, 2006 10:49 AM CST

It was curiosity that drove Mary Klecker to a lifelong career as the agriculture teacher and FFA advisor at Madison East High School.

Mary grew up on a 180-acre hog and beef farm in Redwing, Minn., just across the river from Pierce County and eight miles south of Ellsworth, Wis.

"My roots go back to that farm," she says.

Mary's father prided himself on Black Angus beef cattle, which she and her 10 siblings, five brothers and five sisters, would show at fairs.

The farm also had sheep and a farrow to finish hog operation.

When Mary was a junior in high school, her father decided to leave the farm and take a job at MATC at the Reedsburg location.

"He told me no one was even going to get into farming," she laughs, thinking of where she is now.

In 1968, Mary's father moved to Reedsburg where he also became the agriculture teacher at Reedsburg Web High School. The rest of the family followed that spring and that's where finished high school in 1969.

Following graduation, she attended UW-Madison, where she received her bachelor's degree as a horticulture-business industry undergrad.

Her first job was at a small flower shop in Deforest, owned by a couple of lawyers. Mary admits they didn't know much about horticulture or flowers, so she continued to run the store. On weekends, she would take extra time to set up seminars to educate costumers on plant care. That all changed one day on her way home from work.

Day after day Mary would pass by Madison East High School on her way to and from work in Deforest. Each time she'd gaze at the small empty greenhouse protruding from the second floor of the school. One day as she drove by the school, she decided to stop and ask if she could use the greenhouse as extra space.

"I don't know what made me stop, I guess I was just a bold," she says.

Mary recalls walking into the principal's office and saying, "'I'm a taxpayer. I live on the east side. Could I use your greenhouse?'"

"I don't know what made me think I could just use the schools greenhouse," she laughs. "It really did bother me to see an empty resource."

The principal told Mary he had a better idea. She could bring plants into the greenhouse if she taught a horticulture class, because at that time Madison East was looking for an additional teacher for the agriculture department.

"The Department of Public Instruction temporarily certified me," she says, and she began teaching along with working at the flower shop.

When the owners of the flower shop passed away in a plane crash, a decision was made to close the store. "That kind of forced me to take a look at my career," she says.

Around the same time, a full-time ag teacher position became available at Madison East. Mary decided to apply and got the job at which point she went back to school to get an ag teaching certificate.

Twenty-nine years later, Mary continues to be an ag teacher for the Madison school district.

"I truly enjoy teaching and working with high school students," she says.

After being hired full-time in 1979, Mary began writing school curriculum and working a lot.

"My goal was to get an ag teacher in every high school (in Madison)," she says, but it never happened.

Mary found herself working every week of the year, including summers. Her hours continued to increase as more students joined the program district wide.

"We've had as many as 294 students in the program," she says. Mary had students from all the Madison high schools including La Follette, Madison West, Madison Memorial, and Madison East register for her agriculture classes.

In order to accommodate the students, Mary would schedule to have classes at each school. "I literally taught seven periods," she says.

"I was trying to find a way to have a Madison based FFA," she recalls. "I thought if we looked long range this could be a dynamite FFA system."

To aid in this goal, she acquired a five-acre school land laboratory in 1983, which adopted the FFA motto, "Learning to do, doing to learn, earning to live and living to serve." The lab is located on the corner of Lamplighter Way and Sudbury on Madison's east side.

The first year in operation, the neighbors helped in storing the equipment, Mary says. Knowing that wasn't going to work for another year, she began looking into finding a storage shed for the lab.

"I went looking for surplus tools," she says. "I found a surplus building."

The 20 by 25 foot, steel building was surplus classroom space at La Follette from the late 60's and it was completely empty, she says.

"So I'm thinking - what would it take to move that structure?" she says. Then a construction company said it would pour the concrete slab for the floor and relocate the building for free.

The land lab does not teach production agriculture, she says.

"It's not a farm. I don't try to operate in a production mode," she says. "I use it as a teaching tool to enhance classroom learning."

The land lab is broken down into several different learning areas.

Windbreaks are located on the west and east sides of the laboratory. It is used to teach students how to properly install and maintain windbreaks that reduce windchill and noise.

The land lab also includes an arboretum and vegetable gardens. The arboretum is used to help students identify over 50 ornamental deciduous and evergreen trees and shrubs. The vegetable garden provides a place for students to experience growing a garden, something not all students can obtain living in the city.

Tree fruit production and small fruit production are also part of the land lab, she said. Fruits that are grown on the lab are strawberries, raspberries and grapes. Students use current cultural techniques and also compare and contrast different fruit varieties.

Asparagus is also grown on the land lab, providing another growing experience for the students.

Students have the opportunity to grow vegetable gardens for themselves and their families, she says. As a class, Mary and her students till and plant 12, 20 foot by 40 foot plots each year.

The last section of the land lot is a prairie. The prairie provides more identification learning and also contains prairie plants native to Wisconsin.

"Every third year we do a controlled burn," she says.

Along with the land lab, in class learning and FFA keep Mary busy.

"I try to feed them stuff that is of interest," she says.

A class Mary created to peak interest in freshman students is "Connections - Animal, Plants and People", an introductory agriculture class that covers many aspects of agriculture.

"I was trying to find a way to get freshman in ag class," she says.

Mary also teaches Horticulture 1 and 2, Animal Science 1 and 2, Forestry, Wildlife and Environmental Science and has a Leadership Skills class geared toward active FFA students and officers.

"Many kids don't know what horticulture is," she says. "If the kids don't know what it is, then they have to look it up or read the class description."

Students in the horticulture class are required to be at land lab two classes out of the week.

FFA is taught in all of the agriculture classes, Mary says. Students go through the handbook and learn about the FFA program. All students are FFA members, too.

"It's up to the kids to determine how active they want to be," she says.

Every year Mary helps three to four teams prepare and qualify for State FFA Career Development Events including horticulture, dairy products, floriculture and landscaping.

She provides "resource boxes" for the students to train and learn individually or as a team. The students have access to the boxes whenever they want to study.

"If it becomes a team effort they are more successful," she notes.

Students continuously ask Mary to prepare them for the contests. "I will drill you and work with you," she says she tells them, "but I don't take the test."

Mary is turning her study hall classes into a time to expose students to agriculture by inviting speakers, such as Tom Thieding, Wisconsin Farm Bureau and Pam Jahnke, Wisconsin Farm Report, to the class.

As the leaders of the FFA, the officers are responsible for planning the FFA events including the June Dairy Month pancake breakfast, cupid cake sales with proceeds going to the Humane Shelter, land lab care, land lab Harvest Day and volunteering at multiple events throughout the year.

Fundraising is also a key to FFA success, she says. Members do several fundraisers throughout the year. They work for the Wisconsin Cattlemen's food stand at the State Fair, World Dairy Expo and Mid West Horse Fair.

"All of our fundraisers have to have a service component," she says. "They are service learning activities."

Although Mary had agriculture experience from her family farm, she was never an FFA member.

"I had no FFA background," she says. "I was a girl. Girls weren't allowed in the FFA program."

The year after Mary graduated high school girls were finally allowed to be FFA members.

Mary also took her love for agriculture outside the classroom and to her own home.

In 1987 she decided to buy a farm. She found a 231 acre farm east of Madison, outside Cambridge for the right price $600 per acre.

"My dad told me not to spend anything over $660 per acre," she says.

Mary wanted a low-input farm that was self-sustainable so she could balance the farm, school and raising her three children. Her daughter Emily, 27, is currently employed at GE Lunar; Kathryn is a junior at Cambridge High School; and Patrick is a freshman at Cambridge High School.

"I decided I was going to raise an animal that would be my work partner on the farm," she says. So she decided on bison in a rotational grazing program.

"Sustainability - that was my goal," she says.

Mary started her bison farm with 16 calves from Custer State Park. The herd reached its largest in November of 2006 with over 160 head. Currently Mary has eight calves remaining.

"I paid for that farm in seven years," she says. "And was generating a profit at 10. If you buy right and your heart is there, you can do it right."

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