D3199: Teaching the teachers: Outreach to promote entomology learning experiences in Texas' High Schools

Every year hundreds of high school students around the country compete in local and state level Entomology Career Development Events for Future Farmers of America (FFA). These students must memorize hundreds of facts about a set of insects varying by state. Only eight out of 52 US states or territories have entomology competitions, with Texas being one of them. In 2024, we developed a workshop aimed at FFA agricultural teachers with high school entomology teams, with the goal to bridge instruction and learning experiences to high school students while promoting basic and applied entomology to this age group. The summer workshop involves three days of intensive field and laboratory work, with the objectives to transfer knowledge of collecting methods, curatorial best practices, and specimen/data archiving procedures to agricultural teachers and entomology team coaches. An additional desired outcome of the workshop is to build a collection of invertebrates occurring in the FFA specimen ID list, including supplemental online information further describing species traits including morphological variability. Overall, the project seeks to create new learning experiences in entomology for teachers and students in a central Texas hotspot of biodiversity, while promoting the subject across younger generations of future entomologists.