Meet Dave: Ohio Teacher Who’s Inspiring the Teachers of Tomorrow

This story is part of a series of “meet & greets” with individuals who use our Adopt a Cow program to inspire you with the endless ways you can incorporate the program in the classroom and beyond!

While teaching students is important, educating the future teachers who will one day serve these students is equally meaningful – especially with labor challenges across most of the country. That’s what Dave Harms’ role is all about: he is teaching future teachers (11th and 12th graders) in Northwest Ohio.

“I work with students who want to become teachers and offers a full year of college education classes to high school juniors and seniors. We have high schoolers commuting from 16 different school districts, and we teach four college classes,” he explained. “They go out to teacher placements, get into the classroom, and see different things – such as special education, elementary, junior high, and high school settings. We want to make sure they find the right category, and then they get to choose where they’re at for their senior year.”

As Dave began interacting with these future teachers, he was looking for activities that would help prepare them for working in the elementary school setting.

“I researched activities to help prepare students for elementary teaching, and the Adopt a Cow program was suggested. We jumped in and did it, and we had a great time,” Dave shared. “It was nice to share the learning activities that go along with the program and discuss how fun activities embedded in the curriculum can embellish academic content in the elementary classroom.”

Through Discover Dairy’s Adopt a Cow program, students are paired with a calf from a nearby dairy farm – learning all about her growth, the dairy farm itself, how milk is produced, and more through regular updates, activity sheets and resources. For Dave, several components of the Adopt a Cow program have helped his students during their placements in local elementary schools.    

  • Dairy-themed resources and activities. “Every other week, we received an email that had different dairy lessons and activities. Nine of my students were going to elementary schools on a regular basis, so they took some of the activities and shared it with the teachers they worked with.”
  • America’s Favorite Calf election. “We had our recruitment week with area schools, and we had to give a 20-minute presentation to all 16 member schools. That was during the week of the national election and the program’s ‘America’s Favorite Calf’ mock election. We incorporated our adopted calf, Peony, into our presentation and she ended up winning the mock election.”  
  • Live chat and lesson plans. “We did the virtual live chat with our calf. We were able to see all the different schools and see what types of questions the elementary kids were asking. We pulled up some sample lesson plans that the program sent out and went over them.”
  • New connections. “In Northwest Ohio, most of my students don’t have any experience with actual cows or how much feed they get. When we watched the videos and learned what they were eating or about the different grains, they found it to be very fascinating.”

Dave’s students are highly motivated and passionate about becoming teachers, so the Adopt a Cow Program has given them leadership skills and something concrete they can bring with them into their placements at elementary schools.

“The students have to get [accepted] into college before they can even be in our program, so they’re very serious about being educators. The Adopt a Cow program allows them to go directly into the class and tell their mentor teacher, ‘Hey, I’ve got this program. I’ll run it.’ It gives them a leadership role and allows them to help the teacher out, too,” Dave added.

By investing in the teachers of tomorrow, Dave’s program is also helping with his community’s teacher shortage.

“We have such a teacher shortage that’s going on here. One of my students already got a job offer at her home school [after she receives her certifications],” he explained. “Being able to work with these students who are all so excited about becoming teachers and passionate about helping people has been an amazing change for me. It has reinvigorated me. I like to think I’m just hanging on for the ride. I provide them the opportunities to do things [like the Adopt a Cow program] and they take off and run with them.”

The Adopt a Cow Program is now open for enrollment for the 2025 school year! Click here to learn more and adopt a cow for your classroom today. The program, which impacted more than 1.7 million students last school year, is free thanks to support from Discover Dairy partners and donors.

Discover Dairy is an educational series managed by the Center for Dairy Excellence Foundation of Pennsylvania in partnership with American Dairy Association Northeast, American Dairy Association Indiana, Midwest Dairy, The Dairy Alliance, Dairy Farmers of Wisconsin, Dairy Management West, Dairy West, New England Dairy, Dairy Farmers of Washington, American Dairy Association Mideast, Dairy Council of Florida, United Dairy Industry of Michigan, Maine Dairy and Nutrition Council, and Oregon Dairy Council.