The new Ag Building at Durant High School was shown to the public during an open house last week.
Husband and wife Jeremiah Adams and Kayla Adams are the ag teachers and Mr. Adams said the school district was able to construct the new building from leftover funds from the district’s existing bonds.
“This has been a dream come true for us and it’s been a very long work in progress, but we are very excited to show you what we have and what this program is about and the future of what we think it’s going to be,” Mr. Adams said. “We have many, many great people here to thank for this that have been with us since day one.
“A little over nine years ago, when I started, and when I started, and we had a vision and honestly, our vision didn’t even look this good. So, it’s really cool to see it come this far. This is what you get when you have a supportive administrative team that recognizes your vision, supported people around you, and it comes from the parents, it comes from everybody and we are very, very grateful for what we have. So, I would very easily say this is, if it’s not the nicest ag building in Oklahoma, it’s the top two.”
Adams said the building has become the envy of the program’s region that is Region 2 of the National Association of Agriculture Educators. Next summer, Durant will be hosting the region meeting.
Adams spoke of the FFA program and he said he began teaching in 2016. Kayla Adams was hired in 2021 as the second ag teacher.
“In 2016, we had 90 kids in ag,” Adams said. “This year, right now, we have 194.”
He said that for the third year in a row, Durant FFA has been recognized as a three-star national chapter that is the highest ranking on the national level.
“Throughout the past nine years, we turned out three kiddos right now that are currently Oklahoma ag teachers,” Adams said. “We have three at OSU that are pursuing a degree in agriculture education that will be out within the next three years. We’ve had one state FFA officer. We’ve had many state qualifying teams, open and closing ceremonies, speech contests, shooting sports and we’ve had a few of those state champions as well.”
Durant FFA has also hosted six student teachers during this time and five of those are now Oklahoma ag teachers, according to Adams.
“This is going to keep growing because basically, all of these statistics was in our one-classroom small shop, so I think as we go along, this is just going to keep building more and more,” Adams said.
Mrs. Adams said she is thankful for the administration being savvy on their spending on other facilities, so FFA would have the funds to construct this building.
“Primarily, we teach Ag 1 and Ag 2 which is kind of your lower, your freshmen and sophomore classes,” Mrs. Adams said. “We’re teaching them the fundamentals of agriculture. We’re teaching the fundamentals of FFA and we also prepare them for the shop. We do livestock judging, we do opening and closing ceremonies … speeches and there’s a plethora of options we do in our program and I’m just thankful for this opportunity with the kids we have. They’re so talented and they make us look good.
“We only had one classroom prior to this and now we have three classrooms and so we’re able to actually have our classes on our own time without having to share that or having to get the shop going at the same time as class time. So, it’s been amazing for the kids and we also have a storage room where we keep extra skirts, shirts and FFA jackets for those that may not be able to afford that or maybe they just can’t find them, and so we do have a good closet going for those kids and shoes and all those things. We always try to have many opportunities for all of them.”
Superintendent Mark Moring said the district is providing more career paths at the high school, so students can get a sense of what they want to do or don’t want to do upon graduating high school.
“This is definitely going to do that for any of our kids in our Vo Ag and it’s going to give them some great opportunities,” Moring said. “The shop is first class, the metal storage out here is great. I can’t wait for the greenhouse to come into. It’s still got some electrical and some irrigation stuff to go through, but that’s going to be also a project that goes between our special-needs students and our Vo Ag students working together and so I’m just excited for the opportunities it provides our students.”
The aviation program moved into the old ag building and Moring said the high school is working with Kiamichi Tech.
“We want to expand our nursing program, our vo ag program, our aviation program and give kids an idea of what you want to do or like I say, what they don’t want to do,” Moring said.
Durant High School Principal Amber Bullard is excited about this great facility for the students and she said the Adams worked hard to create educational programs for students that they can use even after high school.
“It was a great transition,” Bullard said. “So, with the opening of this building, aviation was able to move into the older building and so they have great new facilities out there that are perfect for them, space for their new program where they’ll be building an airplane. We also have the greenhouse that’s going in. It will be a partnership between the ag program and our specialeducation program where students in the special-education program can be trained to go into the work field and things like that and so we just have a lot going on. It’s a great day to be a Lion.
“Between aviation and our career tech here with ag, there’s going to be lots of opportunities for students to find employment after high school if they’re not interested in going to college. They may just be career ready whether they make that connection at Kiamichi to get those skills there, but we want to provide them every opportunity for whatever it is they want to do after high school to be successful.”
