WALLOWA — It’s said one should follow their passion to find a genuinely satisfying career. Well, Brianna Micka has a passion — for agriculture.

“There’s such a need for it,” she said. “That’s why I have such a passion for it.”

“Everyone has a connection to agriculture,” said Micka, the ag education teacher and Future Farmers of America adviser at Wallowa High School. “I think it should be a required class. You go to the store and you make a choice (for food) and you don’t know where it comes from. Some of my eighth graders don’t even know where the meat in the store comes from. They just think it’s there.”

Also fueling her passion for agriculture is her recently acquired position as FFA adviser at Wallowa. She encourages all ag students to join the chapter, though it’s not a requirement. Micka said she finds participation in FFA valuable. It certainly was for her.

She was in FFA for four years, as well as in 4-H from fourth grade through high school.

“I loved it,” Micka said. “It’s a great way to learn all this stuff. You get FFA in school as well as 4-H. I did both at the same time.”

FFA is not just about farming. It teaches life skills such as career technical education and job interviews.

“This is just a true life skills class,” Micka said of FFA. “I use (the skills) more in FFA and agriculture classes than I use in any other class. We go over how to get a job — there’s a job interview contest in FFA. I feel like they should have the skills they’ll take out into the real world. It provides so much opportunity. Almost any job you can connect to agriculture.”

Micka’s other teaching subjects cover food science, animal science, ag leadership, intro to ag and a workforce-driven senior seminar that focuses on electrician training, plumbing, mechanics, construction, military, logging, wildland firefighting and lineman training. She teaches a shop class jointly with Dave Duncan.

Wallowa County native

Born and raised in Wallowa County, Micka attended school at Enterprise and at Joseph Charter School, where she was under the tutelage of FFA advisers Stephanie Schofield and Chelcee Mansfield, respectively.

“I look up to both of them,” she said.

Micka’s dad, Jeff Micka, owns and operates Micka Flooring in Enterprise. Her mother, Brenda, is administrative services director for Wallowa County. She has four brothers — Cody, who lives in the Portland area, and Jacob, Tyler and Jared. Jacob is a fellow educator, teaching math at Joseph, while Tyler works in construction and Jared is chief financial officer for Winding Waters Medical Clinic.

Micka always wanted to remain in the county, and since actual agriculture jobs are hard to come by, she figured being an ag educator was the way to go.

She studied her final two years of high school at Joseph and went right to Eastern Oregon University, where she graduated in just three years, thanks to the 40 college credits she accumulated in high school.

At EOU, she majored in elementary education and multiple disciplinary studies with an endorsement in English as a second language. She’s in the process of getting her career and technical education agriculture endorsement.

During her senior year in college, a position opened to teach first grade at Wallowa Elementary School and she was hired with an emergency teaching license, which Oregon grants for teachers-in-training to ease a teacher shortage in the state, Micka said.

She said she had a great time with the first graders and they did well under her instruction.

“I taught first grade here in Wallowa and did my last year (of college) online, so I taught first grade all day and had (college) class at night,” she said.

While she enjoyed teaching the first graders, teaching ag is what she always wanted to do.

“I had a great time teaching first graders last year and now I really enjoy switching gears to high school ag and shop — from crayons to crop science — let’s grow,” she said.

Ag experience

Although the Micka family isn’t strongly into agriculture, Brianna certainly has deep roots there. In addition to her many years in FFA and 4-H, she accumulated more than 4,000 hours of work experience around the county she was able to apply to college credit.

Micka worked as a ranch hand for Jay McFetridge, worked the Elgin Stampede, did cattle work with Todd Nash, and rode and cared for horses with Dena Miller.

Many will remember her as one of the three co-queens of the 2020-21 Chief Joseph Days Rodeo court — kept on for an extra year when the coronavirus pandemic caused the 2020 rodeo to be canceled.

Micka qualified for her ag teaching position with her ag industry work hours. She needed 2,000 hours to qualify. Just with working for McFetridge, she had 2,400 hours. She then had to have a career and technical education committee and mentor which consisted of Sara Hayes, Wallowa High School principal, Mansfield, Nash, McFetridge, Duncan and her CTE coordinator, Jerry Peacock.

Micka said she hopes to get her master’s degree next year, but likely won’t have time to pursue a doctorate.

“Teachers have to keep taking college credits and learning, so I’ll keep doing those,” she said. “But for a doctorate, I’ll be too busy.”

The future

In addition to having a family — “That’s really important to me,” she said — Micka has plans for the ag program at Wallowa.

“One thing that’s kind of planned over the next few years is we hope to make a farm stand on the main street through Wallowa,” she said. “Each class would be a part of it. Shop would build it, food science could provide food for it, animal science could possibly get chickens and have eggs in it, agribusiness could market it, the sawmill could provide firewood, we could have everything.”

Micka’s not sure when it will happen, but she’s already got the go-ahead from Principal Hayes.

“I’m just trying to work out the logistics of it,” she said.

But she’s not eager to move on from Wallowa.

“It feels like home here,” she said. “It feels like family here. I’ve never felt that more.”

“Everyone has a connection to agriculture. I think it should be a required class. You go to the store and you make a choice (for food) and you don’t know where it comes from. Some of my eighth graders don’t even know where the meat in the store comes from. They just think it’s there.”

— Brianna Micka, ag education teacher,

Wallowa High School