The 2025 KFB Ag Literacy Award winner brings the love of the farm and education to her classroom students, providing an enhanced learning experience.

Each year, Kentucky Farm Bureau (KFB) honors one of the state’s deserving teachers with the KFB Excellence in Ag Literacy Award, which recognizes a Kentucky educator for incorporating agricultural concepts into classroom instruction and helping students better understand the importance of agriculture in their daily lives.

The 2025 winner, recognized during the KFB Annual Meeting held last December, is Jalena Bryant, a first-grade teacher at Russell Springs Elementary. She said bringing agriculture into the classroom has been a very natural occurrence for her.

“I have lived on a farm all my life, and I have teaching in my blood as my grandparents were both educators,” she said. “I felt like that was always in my heart. So, it only seemed natural to teach my students something about agriculture.”

Bryant said that the young students are like sponges in that they really soak up a lot of information when it comes to learning, and bringing the farm into the discussions has been something her students have really enjoyed. Her family farm, in nearby Creelsboro, where they raise Boer Goats, Hereford Cattle, and a few chickens, is often part of the ag discussion in the classroom.

“I have been teaching for nine years, and I begin each one by telling my students who I am and that I live on a farm,” she said. “And mostly, they always want to know what kind of animals we have. When I tell them about the goats, they get excited and want to know how many, and we make a game out of it to see if they can guess the number. So, the goats really started my agriculture journey with the students.”

That journey has led her to a number of ag-related subjects she weaves into her daily lessons, often through reading books like the 2025 American Farm Bureau (AFB) Foundation for Agriculture Book of the Year, “The Soil in Jackie’s Garden.”

According to information from AFB Federation, “The Book of the Year award springs from the Foundation’s effort to identify 'Accurate Ag Books,' a collection of nearly 500 books for children, teenagers, and adults that accurately cover agricultural topics. Book of the Year selections are educational, help to create positive public perceptions about agriculture, inspire readers to learn more, and touch their readers’ lives as well as tell the farmer’s story.”

But reading is just one part of the learning process for Bryant’s students. The real fun begins with hands-on activities.

“Of course, literacy is important right off the bat, and we can read a book about types of cows or about soil and its importance with our plants and animals,” she said. “But I get a lot of positive feedback from other teachers, parents, and the students about how much they love hands-on activities.”

That usually involves getting a little dirt on the clothes and hands of the students, and Bryant always gives their parents a heads-up the day before that these types of activities will be going on.

“Even though we are in a rural part of Kentucky, there are many students who live in the city limits, and they don't have farmland or animals, but being able to use something like the garden beds we have at school, it really opens their eyes,” she said. “And I explain to them they can do this at home and grow things right in their own backyards."

Recently, Bryant’s class was able to put new soil in their school garden beds, anticipating the coming growing season. When asked what some of the things they were learning, comments from the students included:

“We make the soil nice and squishy for the worms to make air pods.”

“Put the seeds in the soil and pour water.”

“Butterflies will come to the flowers and make the fruit grow."

Bryant is as excited to see these children learn as they experience these ag-related activities.

“I feel like it's easy for me because I have that love of learning and love of agriculture, and it’s just really natural, to me,” she said.

The importance of Ag Literacy

The Russell County Farm Bureau Women’s Committee nominated Bryant for the KFB Excellence in Ag Literacy Award in 2024 and 2025. Having not won the first time, she wanted to make sure her application was the best it could be for the most recent nomination.

“Honestly, I've always been competitive and wanted to make my application better this go-round, “she said. “I really wanted the judges to know how much agriculture means in my life, not as a teacher, but also as a parent and a Kentuckian.”

Bryant said she feels it’s her responsibility to give her students a better understanding of the ag world around them.

“From a literacy standpoint, I feel like you can turn a story into anything informational,” she said. “For instance, our new topic is soil, and we’re learning about some of the things that make soil better. We talk about the meaning of decomposition and how it’s part of the circle of life. And we discuss how that helps our soil, and it helps new things to start.”

Bryant emphasized that while many of these students won’t take up farming for a living, perhaps they will take the lessons she is teaching now with them as they grow up to use later in life.

“My first students are now juniors in high school, and often I will see some of them, and they always want to know if we still have goats,” she said. “The goats always get the attention, but they do remember.”

Knowing she has planted a seed that her students are taking with them causes a bit of emotion in Bryant when she describes the feeling of knowing she is leaving a lasting impression on her students.

“It makes me proud,” she said. “Very proud.”

In 2027, Bryant is set to compete for a national agricultural literacy award presented by the National Agriculture in the Classroom organization. She will attend the 2026 National Agriculture in the Classroom conference, “Illuminating Agriculture,” held in Providence, Rhode Island, from June 22-25, where she’ll learn alongside other national winners.