The Oklahoma Farm Bureau Women’s Leadership Committee presented Amber Bales, Oklahoma Ag in the Classroom’s 2016 teacher of the year, with a sponsorship for Bales to attend the national AITC conference to be held June 20-24 in Arizona.
Kitty Beavers, OKFB WLC chairman, along with Marcia Irvin, WLC coordinator, presented the award during Ag Day at the Capitol Wednesday, March 30 in Oklahoma City. The national AITC conference provides educators and program coordinators with ideas and techniques on integrating farm and food lessons into their daily lesson plans.
Bales, a third-grade teacher at Morrison Elementary with more than 19 years of teaching experience, infuses her curriculum with agricultural knowledge and lessons. After being named an ATIC teacher of the year runner-up last year, she embarked on a year of growth in hopes to claim the prize in 2016. During her year of self-improvement and discovery, Bales said she grew as a teacher.
“I learned a lot about myself, including the passion I had for agriculture, more ways to integrate agriculture and technology and was given new opportunities to share my agricultural experiences,” Bales said of her year of growth.
Bales will speak at Oklahoma’s summer AITC conference and serve as an inspiration for other teachers who use the AITC curriculum to bring agriculture inside the classroom. She will help them learn how to use lessons like sprouting bean seeds, learning why purple vegetables and fruits are so good for your health, protecting pollinators and researching buffalo facts.
The OKFB WLC is proud to support the Ag in the Classroom program on many levels, helping Oklahoma educators learn more about agriculture and how to incorporate farming and food into their daily classroom activities.
