Stanko earns national honors

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. — Illinois Ag in the Classroom 2024 Teacher of the Year Amanda Stanko was recently named as a National Excellence in Teaching About Agriculture Award winner.

Stanko, a STEM and preschool teacher at Corpus Christi Catholic School in Bloomington, will be recognized at the 2024 National Agriculture in the Classroom Conference in Salt Lake City.

Stanko works with more than 275 kindergarten through sixth-grade students, challenging them to think outside the box using real-world problems and solutions. Her lessons include everything from plant life cycles and utilizing farm products daily.

Stanko and her students also started a “Giving Garden” to support the school cafeteria and local food bank.

Each lesson is tailored to fit the students’ appropriate grade level. For example, kindergarteners learn how to make butter with their adopted cow while sixth-graders learn how to test and amend soil after each growing season.

Stanko’s passion for integrating agriculture has led her to enroll in a master’s program in ag education with the hope of providing an FFA chapter at her school in the future.

Judges evaluating Stanko’s application for the award noted her tenacity for incorporating STEM activities into her lessons and including agriculture topics for all grade levels.

The mission of Illinois Ag in the Classroom is to teach Illinois children agriculture’s importance and the vital role it plays in their lives and society.

IAITC supports local educational and outreach efforts by providing high quality, standards based, scientifically sound agriculture information that can be easily integrated by teachers into the existing classroom curriculum.

Each year, IAITC reaches more than 660,000 students and 37,000 teachers throughout Illinois. Services and materials are provided at no cost to teachers.