LeRoy Teacher wins State Award

Katie Buckley, LeRoy Junior High School Science, Technology,Engineering and Math Educator,was named the 2018 Illinois Ag in the Classroom Teacher of the Year Runner-Up.

She was recognized for her achievements at the Illinois Farm Bureau Annual Meeting in Chicago Dec. 1.

For the past two years, students in Buckley’s STEM Exploratory Class have completed food and farming based learning projects called Purple Plow Challenges.

Her class won the nationwide challenge in 2017 and again in 2018. Buckley is also an alum of the American Farm Bureau STEM on the Farm Program, which gave her the opportunity to travel to Oregon for hands-on and on-farm learning about beef cattle production.

Buckley is a past winner of the McLean County Maitland Agricultural Awareness and McLean County Farm Bureau Ag Science grants.

You can follow Buckley and her students on Twitter @LeRoySTEM to see what they’re learning.

As the Runner Up, Buckley will be Illinois Farm Bureau’s nominee for the American Farm Bureau White-Reinhardt Scholarship.