Derby teacher Korte Warren named ag foundation's 2025 teacher of the year

MANHATTAN, KANSAS, March 7, 2024 – KFAC's Teacher of the Year award recognizes teachers who instill a passion for learning about agriculture within their students. KFAC honors one teacher annually who has successfully integrated agricultural education into their pre-existing curriculum.

2024 is a year of change for KFAC’s Teacher of the Year program. Moving forward, KFAC will choose a Teacher of the Year winner to represent the state a year ahead to work more closely with the educator for a year before recommending them to represent Kansas at the national level.

Korte Warren, 5th grade teacher at Stone Creek Elementary in Derby, has been chosen as the 2025 KFAC Teacher of the Year. She will work closely with KFAC staff over the next year before being submitted as the representative for Kansas at the national level in January 2025.

Warren is in her 16th year of teaching, where she uses a project-based learning model to incorporate agriculture into science, math, reading, and writing. One of Warren’s main goals is to bring real life into the classroom in any form possible. Through agricultural lessons, we can incorporate the Water Cycle and Food Web standards while showing students that they are real-world problem solvers who can and will use this information in the future. Knowing that what they learn in the classroom is in the world around them engages and excites them about their learning.

"Through exposing them to the farming and other careers available in agriculture shows them that life around agriculture is more than just planting and growing food," Warren says. "It has expanded their horizons and gives them more options to explore when finding a career path."

Warren has expanded this learning by bringing in speakers, interviewing experts, and involving several organizations to gather as many resources as possible to enhance student learning. She has incorporated growing kits into family nights and enjoyed hearing stories of students growing their plants at home.

Warren will receive an all-expense paid trip to the 2024 National Agriculture in the Classroom Conference in Salt Lake City, Utah, and an all-expense paid trip to the 2025 Conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Warren will also be considered for the 2025 National Excellence in Teaching About Agriculture Award, presented by National Agriculture in the Classroom.

More information about the KFAC board of directors, including current members, can be found on the KFAC website at www.ksagclassroom.org.