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When people hear about agriculture education, the first thought that usually comes to mind is high school agriculture class and our amazing FFA programs.

I would guess that rarely agriculture education is connected to elementary classrooms.
As an elementary educator with over 25 years of experience, I can tell you agriculture education should be in those classrooms. I have made it my goal in the last few years to share agriculture with the over 900 K-5th grade students I work with.

In 2024, I was fortunate enough to receive a scholarship from the Ohio Farm Bureau Foundation’s Patterson Family Fund for Agricultural Literacy to attend the National Ag in the Classroom Conference. I was so inspired to learn about many creative ways to combine our core academics with agriculture for students as young as 5 years old. I was very fortunate to receive a national scholarship to attend the conference again in 2025 and was overwhelmed by the many new things I learned and could bring back and share with my students.

Currently, I am one of two Innovation Lab Teachers for River Valley Local Schools in Marion County, and I have embraced the opportunity to share agriculture education with my students. Just this school year, we did several units on corn – how it is raised and harvested, the different types and its many uses. We also spent time in November learning about how the food we find on our Thanksgiving table is raised.

I have used countless National Ag in the Classroom resources to teach these topics to my students, and I am so grateful to have been introduced to them on my trip to the National Ag in the Classroom conferences.

Ohio Farm Bureau also offered me the opportunity to share what I learned with teachers from all over the state of Ohio. I was honored to be asked to share my experience at the Ohio State Fair, where Ohio Farm Bureau hosted teachers from all over the state in 2025. I had the chance to not only share two National Ag in the Classroom lessons, but also what I do in my own classroom. An added bonus was my family was asked to share our sheep during the teachers’ visits to the livestock barn (I’m in the red shirt in the photo above.)

Teaching agriculture in an elementary classroom is a great opportunity to spark a love of the industry in our youngest learners and have them share that with those at home.

Katie Isler is Marion County Farm Bureau member and a teacher at River Valley Local Schools.

WHAT’S NEXT

Read more about Ohio Farm Bureau’s immersive ag literacy experience with elementary school educators during the 2025 Ohio State Fair.