Educators receive grants to support ag learning

    HARLAN -- The Iowa Agriculture Literacy Foundation (IALF) has awarded 142 grants to schools throughout Iowa to support the integration of agriculture into classroom instruction or after school programs with an academic focus.
    Yvonne Gaul and Ann Andersen from Shelby County Catholic School received up to $250 to integrate agriculture into science or language arts lessons, and conduct Agriculture in the Classroom type projects.
    The Agriculture in the Classroom Teacher Supplement Grants are designed to help teachers initiate new projects or expand existing projects that promote agriculture literacy in students.  
    Grants can be used to fund innovative lessons, activities, classroom resources, guest speakers, outreach programs, field trips, and other projects.
    “We had a lot of great applications this year whose projects will focus on integrating agriculture into science, social studies, and language arts curriculums,” said IALF education program manager Cindy Hall.  “We hope these grants will allow teachers to make real world connections to what they are already teaching.”
    The school projects that were funded for Yvonne Gaul and Ann Andersen’s classrooms included a request for incubators to learn about life cycles, eggs and chickens, and a request for gardening supplies to learn about the food we eat.
    The grants are a special project of IALF and were made possible through support from the Iowa Farm Bureau Federation.  
    “We are very pleased to be able to provide this support to classrooms interested in teaching agriculture,” said IFBF director of community resources Ronnette Vondrak.  
    The projects will be completed before the end of the school year with final reports due by June 5, 2021.For more information visit www.iowaagliteracy.org.