Potatoes New Zealand is shining a spotlight on people who are doing inspirational activities in horticulture, such as Laura Torpey, who works at AS Wilcox. Let’s get to know Laura and the great work she is doing with Little Labs.
Laura Torpey describes herself as “a farm kid through and through, from the beautiful Awhitu Peninsula”. She spent her childhood playing on the beach, fishing with her father, duck shooting each year, building huts, raising lambs for calf club, riding motorbikes, and helping with all kinds of farm jobs. Her family farm is a Red Deer Farm, with a small mob of cattle too. Laura says she is a loyal member of the Franklin Young Farmers Club. Although she is pretty much the only person in the club who isn’t a dairy farmer, joining the club has been fantastic for her. She highly recommends joining a local club for any other young farmers or rural professionals. “It’s great fun.”
After Laura’s time at Waiuku College, she went to Auckland University to study Biomedical Science. She was the first in her family to go to university and her family are pretty proud about such an accomplishment. Laura’s degree was fairly broad, across many topics. Genetics, Microbiology, Immunology, Cancers, Pathophysiology, and a little sprinkle of Biochemistry in there too. Her favourite subject was always Microbiology. Studying such tiny things, how they interact with each other and also with their environment, she found it fascinating. She has spent a lot of time admiring how impressive things are, while she was in the lab burning inoculating loops and smearing agar plates.
She says that they never really had science lessons at primary school, which meant that they weren’t exposed to science until year 9, at high school. For Laura, and for many others, it was a bit of a shock to the system. She remembers thinking that ‘science is too hard’, ‘science isn’t for girls’, and feeling that ‘I’m too dumb for this’. Nothing was making sense, so she become disengaged from it all. Laura was then lucky to get a really passionate science teacher, who took the time to explain things in a different way. That’s when she really caught ‘the bug’, and suddenly Laura too was really passionate about science. Particularly with Biology.
When she was about halfway through her university studies, she overheard my younger cousin talking about the same thing – that the jump from year 8 to year 9, was too big – coming from a rural primary school, where there wasn’t really any exposure to science, to suddenly having a dedicated science class. It was overwhelming.
Laura’s younger cousin was going through the same thing she had previously experienced – Feeling that it was too hard for them, or that they weren’t smart enough for it. So Laura thought, “well, I’m studying science and I have spare time. I’m going to volunteer to do some science stuff with the primary school kids”. That’s when she started going in to some rural primary schools, on a casual basis. That’s how Little Labs started.
Current Role
Laura has been at A.S. Wilcox, in Pukekohe, for just over a year and is working as a Crop Team Leader, looking after the broccolini department. She loves this work and has got some fantastic workmates, and she really enjoys looking after the harvest and people related aspects of it. She has found that there are lots of opportunities in the industry.
At the moment, she is starting to study Agronomy, which she is enjoying. She says, “it’s interesting how similar diseases can be between plants and people”. She often finds herself thinking about the soil microbiology when she is out in the crop. The famous phrase, about how we owe our existence to a six inch layer of top-soil, is very much true for her!
Motivation
Laura’s motivation really came about when she was at the end of her Bachelors degree, and she was thinking about heading into a Masters degree. She had spent 4 years living a concrete walled shoebox like room in Auckland CBD and she was well and truly over it. Although living in the big smoke can be fun (only a short walk to both the lecture theatres and labs, as well as to the bars and clubs), she had set myself up to fail a little bit there. She is a farm kid, spent her whole life living rurally.
Living in the CBD was never going to be good for her and the career which she was setting herself up for, doing medical related research work in a lab, that kind of work is really only ever done in big cities either here in New Zealand, or overseas. This meant that Laura would either continue to live in the city, live overseas, or maybe live in the suburbs and spend a large amount of time sitting in traffic on the motorway. That’s not a lifestyle that she wanted for herself, or for her future family. She says that if she ever does have kids, she wants them to have the same awesome childhood that she had – Calf club. Fishing. Duck Shooting. Farming. All of it.
So Laura took a step back from jumping into a masters degree and decided that she should move back home to Awhitu and work full time, while she finished my last two papers. And ended up getting a job with AS Wilcox in Pukekohe. It was a great fit right from the start. They were really flexible with her taking days off for going to university for labs and exams. And they were pretty keen to hear about her volunteering work with Little Labs.
AS Wilcox as a company, is pretty passionate about growing their communities. That’s the typical farming attitude though she reckons, looking after our neighbours and coming together to support each other. She says that she has never met a farmer who wasn’t like that.
Working in the horticulture industry has come with all kinds of new skills to learn. Coming from animal agriculture, to horticulture, has definitely been a bit of a jump, but she has loved it. Laura gets to drive tractors, learn about the different pests and diseases, which pose a risk to different crops, She works closely with a team and with a tightly knit community of Pukekohe growers. Laura has all sorts of people in utes waving out to her now as she drives around Patumahoe and Pukekohe. Laura says, ‘it’s great to feel a part of a community like that.”
Little Labs
A highlight of Laura’s career has been turning Little Labs into a registered charity. It has even secured funding from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, as well as receiving some kind donations from various businesses. Previously Laura was using her own funds and her student allowance, so she was pretty limited in what she could offer the kids.
Now, with the funding, she has been able to turn Little Labs into a year long program offered on a weekly basis for two schools this year. Laura still volunteers her time to teach and run the program while working fulltime, but now she has some excellent teaching resources to use, and workbooks for the kids. “It’s all been really exciting,” she says.
Little Labs – The Program
Little Labs provides free science lessons and career/trade focus sessions to rural primary school kids (years 0-8). This year Laura is working with primary schools in the Franklin area, although long term she is aiming to turn Little Labs into a more nationwide service. The kids really benefit from the hands on, in-person learning experiences. It is also a fantastic hit with the teachers, having a ‘subject expert’ come in to teach the topics, so that the teacher can just focus on monitoring students while joining in on the fun, it’s a massive bonus.
Some teachers may not have the confidence to teach science topics, or they may not have the resources or the time to execute it. It’s a multifaceted issue, which results in lots of small rural schools falling through the cracks. It’s not uncommon for these kids to have absolutely zero exposure to science, until they reach High School. It can be an intimidating and daunting subject for them. Little Labs is a comprehensive program, offered to every child in the school (years 0 to 8, which is ages 5 until 13), usually every week or every second week.
Each Little Labs lesson targets all different forms of learning, to really reinforce the topics to all students. Starting with a group discussion, encouraging active engagement from the whole class, alongside a series of relevant photos/diagrams and videos. Laura brings in real examples for the kids to interact with.
For the Shark topic, she brought in some real shark jaws (Great white and Bronze Whaler) for the kids to hold, so they could feel the teeth, look at the differences in these species, and for them to understand the mechanism which these sharks use to replace their teeth as they inevitably lose them. We then move on to complete a Little Labs worksheet with questions to answer, and diagrams to draw/label.
The lessons are designed to target all forms of learning: Visual, Auditory, Kinesthetic, and-Reading/Writing/Drawing. However, the main event of each lesson is the hands on component. So many children learn this way, but they don’t always get the opportunities due to the constraining nature of classroom at a school, which may also be limited on resources. These are the kids who she is really trying to target.
The career/trade sessions (mainly for years 5 to 8) will have a heavy focus on agriculture and horticulture as well as other rural industries, recruiting local volunteers to come and demonstrate to the kids what they do for work. It’s all about “Locals Supporting Locals”, and “giving things a go”.
At the end of the year, Little Labs will host an inter-school science fair. Each child works on a project to display, as a way of showing what they have been able to accomplish, and to demonstrate the impact that Little Labs has had.
The Future
Laura would like to expand the Little Labs program and offer it to more rural schools throughout New Zealand, focusing on a few rural primary schools each year. Little Labs is something which she intends to run part time alongside her full time job. Maybe someday Little Labs will become big enough to employ some people to help me out a bit. Dreams are free!
She has got all sorts of cool topics and experiments planned out. With time (and more funding), the program will only get better and better.
Note From Laura
The most common feedback I get from adults is “man, I wish we had something like this when I was at school!”. And to that I reply, “so do I!”. It’s the whole reason I started Little Labs. I want to give these kids the experiences and opportunities which we never got to have at their age. If you or your business would like to give a donation to Little Labs, become a sponsor, or even volunteer your time for a careers/trade based session, please email ynhen@yvggyrynof.pb.am