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The National Ag in the Classroom Conference in 2024 was unlike most conferences elementary school teacher and Marion County Farm Bureau member Katie Isler has attended.

“I’ve been to a lot of teacher conferences, and it was one of the most applicable conferences I’ve ever been to,” she said. “I could incorporate one or two lessons and didn’t have to incorporate whole units. Other conferences can leave you overwhelmed, but at this one, you learned to pick and choose how to incorporate it. It has been a lot of fun.”

Isler was awarded Ohio’s National Ag in the Classroom Conference Educator Scholarship, made possible through the Ohio Farm Bureau Foundation Patterson Family Ag Literacy Fund, to attend last year’s conference in Salt Lake City. Registration, travel and hotel accommodations were covered by the scholarship.

This year, the foundation is awarding two scholarships to the 2025 National Ag in the Classroom Conference to be held June 23-26 in Minneapolis.

The ability to fold ag literacy into her ongoing curriculum was important to Isler, who teaches almost a thousand students at Heritage and Liberty Elementary Schools. She is one of two Innovation Lab instructors in the River Valley Local Schools elementary schools.

Innovation Lab is a hands-on learning space that students visit once or twice a week for 40-minute classes. All 950 kindergarten through 5th grade students come to the Innovation Lab and instructors have the freedom to teach a wide variety of subjects in a hands-on way.

Recently she and her students looked at different parts of a traditional Thanksgiving meal and took a deeper dive into where their food comes from and how to prepare it. For example, her fifth-grade students studied yeast and what part of a wheat harvest becomes grain. Her fourth-grade students studied large-scale turkey production.

“It was terrific to take the opportunity to bring positive agriculture education into their lives,” she said. “Kids are excited about food and to tie the two together? That’s a win.”

Isler noted that learning about agriculture in a different part of the country was also a bonus of the experience.

“I was able to use my experiences from the conference in multiple ways,” Isler said. “It was money well spent. I’ve been able to reach a lot of kids.”

Key points

• Two K-8 grade Ohio educators will receive sponsored registration, travel and hotel accommodations to attend the 2025 National Ag in the Classroom Conference to be held June 23-26 in Minneapolis. Applications closed in December.
• Ohio’s National Ag in the Classroom Conference Educator Scholarship is
  made possible through the Ohio Farm Bureau Foundation Patterson Family
  Ag Literacy Fund.