December 2018: Employee Spotlight - Jennifer Wysocki

Mercer fourth-grade teacher Jennifer Wysocki glows with an enthusiasm that’s awfully catching. Whether she’s chatting about her professional life in her inspired classroom or sharing delightful nuggets about the four-acre farm she shares with her husband, three silkie chickens, 21 Coturnix quail, five Japanese button quail and two cats, it’s clear that Ms. Wysocki is living her dream. To be sure, she’s the kind of person who’s innately curious about the world and then brings that same spirit to her students. Learn more about Ms. Wysocki and see the clever Instagram photo shoots she and her husband, Adam, have posted on Instagram at adifer_farms.

How did you come to live on a farm? Did you grow up on one? 
Actually, no. I grew up in Kirtland. My husband and I first lived in Wickliffe, but we both love wide open spaces, so we bought our farm in Leroy. A while back, we found this book on quail and we were like, “We can do this!” So my husband built a coop that looks like our house—it even has the garage doors and a screened in porch. 

Tell us about your farm brood.
Well, our chickens aren’t like the normal chickens you think of. We have three silkie chickens—they’re super fluffy with a full crest and feathers on their feet. And we learned that chickens actually give you a name. When they see you enough, they develop a call for you and they use it when they see you. Also, when they lay eggs, they cheer for each other. It’s pretty cool. 

The 21 Coturnix quail are the common quail and then the Japanese Button Quail are really small. We don’t raise any of the birds for meat, we just eat the eggs. At some point, our goal is to sell quail eggs at a local farmer’s market. They’re a novelty and they’re really tasty. They’ve got a different taste than a chicken egg because they’ve got a richer quality. The eggs are also super small. They look more like dinosaur eggs because they’re speckled.

Do you eat eggs every day?
Pretty much. Egg production is determined by the sun. So, in the summer, we get about 15 eggs a day, but in the winter, we only get maybe five a day.

And you grow produce?
Yep. We have a greenhouse with a solar panel on top of it, so even in the dead of winter, it can stay about 60-degrees inside. We also hybrid our own plants. We have a french fry plant that we made—it’s a potato on the bottom and a tomato on the top. We spliced the plants and fused them together. My husband and I are also into fermenting vegetables, so we make fermented beets and kimchi. It’s a lot of fun.

How much of what you do at home do you bring to the classroom?
We used some of our eggs for a naked egg experiment where we tested the eggs I brought from home with some store-bought eggs. But mostly I share the power of having a growth mindset with my students. I tell them that sometimes, you’ll read something in a book, online or on Pinterest and you think it sounds like a cool idea. And then you try it and it doesn’t come out the same. So you have to keep trying and trying and most of the time, it’ll work out. For example, this was our seventh year with our garden and every year, something dies or we realize we don’t have the right soil or there’s some other problem—we had a rare root vegetable that took four years to get it to work! So I try to remind the students that sometimes, you have these really cool ideas and it’s OK if they don’t work out at first. 

Tell us something that’s special about your classroom. 
Three years ago, my students came up with the idea to have an economy system in the classroom. Ever since, the students earn paychecks for things like doing their homework. But they’re also entrepreneurs, so they can get paid for making goods or performing a services. Sometimes they’ll clean desks, one time a student taught me some German. They’ll make goods like origami figures or other cool decorations for desks. They pay me for the supplies and I teach them that they have to increase the price over what they paid to make a profit. It’s a great lesson in how the world works and opportunity costs—I often hear them saying things like, “Oh, I really want to save up for XYZ, but that cup of tea looks soooo good.” So, I know they’re weighing options and need, just like they would if they wanted to buy something with real money. 

What’s your favorite thing about teaching?
I love this school. I felt really discouraged when I left college and then I went to my first teaching job and they handed me papers and said, “Here’s the curriculum. Teach it.” I was really turned off because it was just so prescribed. Then I was looking online and saw this thing called IB and right away, I knew that’s what I wanted to do. I made so many connections with IB because of the experiential learning piece. So, when Mr. Florence called me five-and-a-half years ago to be a skills teacher and I had the chance to look inside the classrooms here, I was like, “Thank you universe! There is where I’m meant to be.” It’s a great environment because I have the freedom to do what works for kids and I don’t have to teach to a test. This is my dream. I live for this classroom every day.