Nathan Anderson knew he wanted to be a teacher when he was a senior in high school and embarked on the necessary education as soon as he graduated. Now in his fourth year of teaching agriculture at Watertown-Mayer High School in Watertown, MN, Anderson teaches a variety of courses, including animal science, plant science, and outdoor adventures. Because agriculture is an elective program at his school, it’s essential to recruit students.
“Hands-on learning brings so much value,” he said. “I can sit here and talk about the reproductive tracts and anatomy and whatnot, and the kids can maybe get it, but when they actually get to see it and get their hands on it, it brings a whole new level of education to the experience. You can tell when a kid is not understanding a concept. When I see that lightbulb on, that’s when I know it’s worked.”
Nathan Anderson
Ag Instructor, FFA Advisor, Trap Coach
Watertown-Mayer High School
Watertown, MN
That’s why Anderson sought Perkins funding in 2021 for the Bovine Breeder™ artificial insemination simulator. This unique learning aid that teaches proper AI gun position techniques and correct cervix manipulation. He later obtained the Swine Breeder™, a life-size simulator for practicing AI an birthing techniques, as well.
As it happens, these learning aids are also proving to be popular content for his growing TikTok channel. Anderson (@mnagteacher) is quickly becoming a TikTok teacher star, with 219.5K followers and 8.9 million likes. His motivation for turning to the popular video-sharing social media platform? Increase student engagement and recruit students into agriculture courses.
“My wife had TikTok, and I thought it was pretty silly,” Anderson shared. “Then the pandemic happened, and I was looking for ways to keep my students engaged. I started making videos and it snowballed.”
Since he started posting in spring 2020, his followers – and enrollment in his agriculture classes – has continued to increase.
“It gets so many kids in the door,” said Anderson, who posts about everything from teacher life to instructional videos, like how to build a fishing rod or how to palpate a cow:
@mnagteacher #answer to @spidermark790
As Anderson stated, “If students don’t sign up for my classes, I don’t have a job.”
Recruiting Students is Key
Anderson purchased the Bovine and Swine Breeders when he was looking for a way to give students hands-on practice without having access to a real cow. Now he uses the simulators in his animal science classes to give students realistic experience before their regularly scheduled trip to a local dairy farm to work with live animals — and their presence is proving popular on social media:
@mnagteacher
“My videos showing Realityworks’ products are my highest-performing videos ever,” said Anderson.
Meet Your New Learning Aids
Introducing students to the simulators was a unique experience, according to Anderson:
“They’re a little taken aback by [the simulator],” said Anderson. “But then, after they understand the process and why it’s being done, they really enjoy it.” He uses the learning aids toward the end of the swine and dairy units as a capstone. Anderson displays the simulators at the front of the class so they’re the first thing students see when they walk in, immediately sparking their curiosity and prompting questions.
Bovine and Swine Simulation
Students start by practicing farrowing with the Swine Breeder as they train in a variety of delivery positions. The next day, they practice artificial insemination after watching a video on the process. This hands-on practice gives students the experience they need to see themselves eventually working in this field.
“I have a few kids every year that seem to hint that they’re going to be looking at that as a career option,” Anderson shared. “When I see the lightbulb come on in a kid’s brain when they realize something is a possibility for them that they didn’t even know about, that’s awesome.”
Anderson can tell these tools are working by the overall behavior of the students. He uses these simulators as part of his tests, having students assist with a birth, an artificial insemination, or pregnancy palpation. He has yet to see a student get this portion of the assessment wrong.
“My admin loves the products,” Anderson said. “He just thinks it’s awesome because it’s getting the kids who might not normally like school to like school a little bit more.”
“I tend to get the kids that don’t excel so well in subjects like math and English, so the hands-on learning makes my classes so much more engaging for everyone, especially those kids – they can really fly high,” Anderson explained.
As there are no swine farms near Anderson’s school, the Swine Breeder is the closest students can get to practicing farrowing and AI skills. However, students do get their hands on (or in) real cows as a part of his class, and he’s noticed much less hesitation in students who practiced with the Bovine Breeder first.
“The one time I [went to the farm] without the Breeder, kids were very concerned they were going to hurt the cow,” Anderson observed. “Then doing it with the simulator, that all just went away. They weren’t scared about hurting her. They were scared about getting hurt… but they weren’t scared about the actual process.”
Anderson recently acquired a Bovine Birthing and Ultrasound Simulator for use alongside his Bovine and Swine Breeders. He appreciates both the engaging classroom learning opportunities and ease of implementation.
“The curriculum helps a lot as well,” he reflected. “It teaches all the stuff I would have had to compile anyway, and it’s all there, ready to use.”
The Tractor Pull
Anderson is implementing the RC Tractor Pull Challenge into his technical applications in agriculture class next year. He gave students in his small engines class a preview of the course using the tractors. In these lessons, students learned how to optimize the performance of a tractor.
The RC Tractor Pull Challenge consists of five remote-control tractors and a pulling sled with weights that students use to explore tractor systems and structures. Students can use this challenge to experiment with force, motion, friction, gravity, and other STEM concepts. They can adjust weight distribution, gear ratios, tire sizes, and more to see how those factors affect a tractor’s ability to pull weight a certain distance.
“They love [the tractors]… they thought it was the coolest thing ever,” said Anderson. He has students learn about wheel slippage by marking the tractor tires to see how many times the wheel spins going a certain distance before attaching a trailer weight to it and seeing how many times it spins again. He also has students complete a tractor pull after adjusting the weights and hitch height to observe how those variables change the pulling outcome.
Anderson puts students in groups of three to work with the tractors. “Normally, when you do group work, you always get one kid that’s just going to sit there and do nothing, and there wasn’t much of that with these tractors,” he shared. “Everyone wanted to get their hands on it and do something.”
“It really gets [the students] going,” said Anderson. “I don’t give them much instruction on what to do to make it pull more weight. I just give them that PowerPoint that Realityworks already made that talks about the parts of the tractor… so they know how the parts all work and then I say, ‘You figure out how to make a tractor that’s going to pull the most weight.’”
From there, students learn how to optimize their tractor through trial and error as well as studying what classmates with more successful pulls did. “Most students can figure it out pretty good right away,” said Anderson.
It’s easy to measure student success for this challenge. When the students successfully get their tractor to pull more weight, Anderson knows they’re understanding the concepts he’s teaching. “They got to problem-solve to figure out what they have to do to make it work,” Anderson explained. “The vast majority of the kids, it took no effort at all to get them to keep buckling down and trying to figure out how to make it better, and that’s what I classify as success for them.”
“The tractors are my favorite,” said 17-year-old Timothy Quast, an eleventh-grader at Watertown-Mayer High School who has taken several of Anderson’s classes. “Learning with my hands — that’s the only way I learn. So it’s nice to have these tools here to help me figure out what I’m doing… if I didn’t have tools like these, it don’t think it would go very well – I don’t think it would stick at all with me because I just really need to get in there with my hands and do a thing.”
Quast, who hopes to become an agricultural mechanic or a welder, sees a valuable connection between the skills he is practicing in class and the future.
“There are so many fields you could go into because of what you learn in the classroom,” said Quast. “With the tractors, for instance, you can learn how to distribute weight from front to rear and everything like that. I was at one point at a tractor pull and it would have made a big difference if I had known a little more then. There’s a lot of opportunities in these subjects.”
When asked if he had any advice for teachers looking for creative ways to recruit students and increase engagement, Anderson told us:
“Hands-on learning brings so much value,” he said. “I can sit here and talk about the reproductive tracts and anatomy and whatnot, and the kids can maybe get it, but when they actually get to see it and get their hands on it, it brings a whole new level of education to the experience. You can tell when a kid is not understanding a concept. When I see that lightbulb on, that’s when I know it’s worked.”
Anderson’s Tips for TikTok Teacher Success
- Don’t show students’ faces or share their names to ensure their privacy is protected. In Anderson’s case, he films all videos either before or after school to avoid students.
- Coordinate with your administrators to share your school’s name, logo, and other identifiers, or avoid it if needed.
- Post consistently, ideally daily. Anderson has learned that the more you post, the more engagement you’ll get.
- Make several videos at once to save time. Anderson told us he sometimes makes 10 videos at a time.
- Feature fun props, like hands-on learning aids, in your videos whenever possible.
Looking for more student engagement ideas? In this on-demand webinar, Nathan Anderson and other agricultural educators share their top tips.
Learning tools used:
Bovine Breeder™ artificial insemination simulator
This simulator is a unique learning aid that teaches correct cervix manipulation, AI gun positioning and pregnancy palpation.
Swine Breeder™ artificial insemination simulator
Use this simulator to teach proper swine artificial insemination and birthing techniques. This sturdy, portable tool allows students to sit on it while checking for standing heat and replicate artificial insemination techniques.
Bovine Birthing and Ultrasound Simulator
Give your students hands-on practice conducting bovine ultrasounds and birthing calves with our Bovine Birthing and Ultrasound Simulator.
RC Tractor Pull Challenge (5-pack) with Pulling Sled
Use this interactive RC Tractor Pull Challenge kit to explore tractor systems and structures and experiment with force and motion, friction and gravity, and other STEM concepts.