January 2020
The American Farm Bureau Foundation for Agriculture has recognized the outstanding agricultural literacy efforts of educators and communities across the country with a total of $25,000 in scholarships and grants to build on their work to connect students with how their food is grown.
The Foundation awarded 10 teachers and classroom volunteers with $1,500 scholarships to attend the National Ag in the Classroom Conference (NAITC), to be held in Salt Lake City, Utah, June 23-26.
This year’s recipients are: Leah Slaughter, Lake Weston Elementary School, Orlando, Florida; Jenna Stevens, Clinton County Ag in the Classroom, DeWitt, Iowa; Nancy Smith, Bentwood Elementary, Olathe, Kansas; Audrey Varney, Maine Cooperative Extension Maine 4-H/University of Maine Farmington, Turner, Maine; Christopher Arrington, Marion Public Schools, Marion, Michigan; Karrie Newton, Northern Granville Middle School, Bullock, North Carolina; Matthew Koth, Highland Elementary School, Omaha, Nebraska; Brianne Willson, Camden Middle School, Ava, New York; Debra Nelson, Bottineau High School, Bottineau, North Dakota; and Melissa Shirk, Philadelphia Elementary, Loudon, Tennessee.
The conference helps educators from across the nation learn how to incorporate real-life agricultural applications into science, social studies, language arts, math and nutrition lessons. Scholarship recipients were judged on their past use of innovative programs to educate students about agriculture as well as plans to implement information gained at the NAITC conference in their own lesson plans and share the information with other teachers and volunteer educators.