Teacher of the Year Awards
Teresa Strong
MAC is proud to announce that our 2011 Teacher of the Year is Teresa Strong, science specialist at Harvard-Kent Elementary School in Charleston. Teresa participated in our 2007 Summer Graduate Course and was awarded two mini-grants from MAC in 2007 and again in 2011. She has taught several workshops for other teachers at our annual conferences. Always one of MAC's biggest advocates, Teresa shares notices of our education programs with Boston school educators. We enjoy her enthusiasm for agriculture and science, as well as her readiness to share.
Teresa has a Master's Degree in Elementary English and Middle School Science Education. She has worked in the Boston Public Schools for 19 years as a science specialist, computer teacher, 4th grade teacher and a peer teacher leader. She presents workshops on gardening and outdoor science education through the Boston Natural Areas Network, Boston Schoolyard Initiative and Boston Public Schools.
Teresa's interest in nature and gardens started at a young age and was nurtured in youth at nature centers, summer camps and after school programs. In her 20's she joined a community garden and learned about ecosystems and how everything is connected. When she began teaching, these experiences oozed into what she taught. She found that hands-on experiences gave the students access to the curriculum. During the graduate experience with MAC she got to be on farms with real farmers, where she found tools needed to grow robust plants and maintain a healthy garden. Fellow educators also shared how to bring agricultural content to the classroom in an engaging way. Congratulations Teresa!
2010 Massachusetts Teacher of the Year
Cassandra Uricchio
MAC is proud to announce that our Teacher of the Year for 2010 is Cassandra Uricchio, who teaches agriculture and life science at Mount Everett High School in Sheffield. Cassie participated in our 2007 Summer Graduate Course. She was awarded a mini-grant in 2008 to construct a school farm on campus. We have been inspired by her energy and passion for teaching agriculture and the many new programs she created.
The local Sheffield community shares our enthusiasm for Cassie and her agricultural education efforts. We received nomination letters from the school's principal; director of technology and vocational education; FFA president; the regional school district and the executive director of the Land Trust as well as a local farmer. All applauded her energy and drive and the connections she makes with her students, while also linking agriculture and the community.
After receiving a B.S. in Animal Science from UConn and a M.S. in Agricultural Education from NC State University, Cassie began teaching at Mt. Everett in 2006. She started a new agriscience program & FFA chapter in 2007. She developed new courses including Agricultural Biology; Agri-Science & Biotechnology; Animal Science, Plant Science; Pathobiology, and Fish & Wildlife Management. In the community she collaborated with the building structures program to raise a barn on school campus. Cassie is currently on leave of absence to return to NCSU on full assistantship to finish her Ed.D in Agricultural & Extension Education. We congratulate her and wish her the best in her studies.
2009 Massachusetts Teacher of the Year
Robert Cote
Massachusetts Agriculture in the Classroom is proud to announce that our Teacher of the Year for 2009 is Robert Cote, who teaches fifth grade at the Jordan Jackson School in Mansfield. Bob participated in our Summer Graduate Course in 2008. Since then he has taught three workshops for other teachers at our winter conferences and offered a summer workshop focusing on goats on his own farm in Pascoag, RI. We have been inspired by his enthusiasm for teaching, passion for animals and the knowledge he shares with others.
For over 25 years, Bob worked as an information technology consultant for a Fortune 500 financial company. During that time he and his family lived on a small farm where he raised various animals, honeybees, and grew a large organic garden. For a long time however, he held onto the dream of one day making a difference in the lives of children and giving something back. That dream became a reality when he left his full time career to consult part time while studying to be a teacher.
Bob received a Masters of Art in Teaching from Simmons College in 2004 and soon began teaching at the Jordan Jackson School. His classroom is alive with the experiments he and his students develop, from composting earthworms, to growing crystals and raising plants in soil and hydroponically. He continually entertains his students with the latest antics of the animals on his farm where he lives with his wife Mary and raises dairy goats, sheep, honeybees, chickens, some "strange" dogs and more.
2008 MAC Teacher of the Year
Becky Bottomley
Massachusetts Agriculture in the Classroom is proud to announce that our Teacher of the Year for 2008 is Becky Bottomley, who has been teaching Biology, Environmental Science and Horticulture at Quabbin Regional High School in Barre for the past ten years. In that time she has attended many MAC workshops, hosted a full-day greenhouse study course at her school and also taught soils and plant propagation for our winter conference. We have all been inspired by her enthusiasm for teaching and the knowledge she shares with others.
Becky grew up on a Connecticut farm with many farm animals, an orchard, corn fields, large vegetable garden and Christmas trees. She gained a lot of experience working in the family-owned farm supply business and garden center. Her love of plants and animals led her to major in Biology at the University of Connecticut, and then to teaching - first at Marlborough High School and later in Barre. Becky and her husband and three children now live in Hardwick, Mass. in a renovated 1830s farmhouse. They have raised cows, chickens, sheep, pigs and have large vegetable and flower gardens.
Becky integrates many hands-on activities into her classroom and also uses the school grounds as an outdoor classroom. Students landscape the school grounds and Quabbin Regional School District's Central Office and plant flowers on the Barre Common for Memorial Day. Becky also coaches the Quabbin Envirothon team, preparing them for this statewide environmental competition. Consistently Quabbin's team wins many awards. Becky also received the Secretary's Award for Excellence in Energy and Environmental Education in Massachusetts in 2008. Her classroom is an inspiration and we congratulate him!
MAC is seeking nominations now for the 2009 MAC Teacher of the Year Award. Do you know a teacher who does an exceptional job of bringing agriculture alive in their classroom? Consider nominating them for this special award. Send a description of their agricultural classroom, and the reason that you recommend them for the award, to the address below. Applications are due March 15, 2009. The winner will be high-lighted in the Fall 2009 MAC newsletter and the award will be presented at our MAC Annual Conference in February of 2010.
2007 Massachusetts Teacher of the Year
Massachusetts Agriculture in the Classroom is proud to announce our Teacher of the Year for 2007. Bill Cassell is a third-grade teacher at the L.D. Batchelder School in North Reading. Over the past several years, Bill has attended MAC workshops contributing his insights, received a mini-grant to support his Field to Plate Program and taught a workshop for educators at our 2007 Conference. We have been inspired by his enthusiasm for teaching and his program where students grow wheat, corn, beans, potatoes and apples and then make food from their crops based on the foods that immigrants would have brought with them.
After graduating from Harvard College and Harvard Business School, Bill worked as a manager in the newspaper publishing industry for almost 20 years. During much of this time, his focus was on developing and leading managers in acts of radical and continuous change.
To be with his newborn son, Bill began consulting in 1992, which gave him time to volunteer in an elementary school near his home in Lexington. In the classroom of Steven Levy, Mass. Teacher of the Year in 1992, he realized that teaching elementary students was immensely satisfying and probably a more efficient way of implementing change in society than managing adults. Bill subsequently earned a Master's Degree in Education from Lesley College and began teaching 3rd grade at the Batchelder School in 2000. His classroom is an inspiration and we congratulate him!
MAC is seeking nominations now for the 2008 MAC Teacher of the Year Award. Do you know a teacher who does an exceptional job of bringing agriculture alive in their classroom? Consider nominating them for this special award. Send a description of their agricultural classroom, and the reason that you recommend them for the award, to the address below. Applications are due March 15, 2008. The winner will be high-lighted in the Fall 2008 MAC newsletter and the award will be presented at our MAC Annual Conference in February of 2009.
2006 MAC Teacher of the Year
Regina Adams
MAC is proud to announce our Teacher of the Year for 2006. Regina Adams was nominated by her principal, April Graziano of First Assembly Christian School in Worcester, for her impressive ability to teach kindergarten students about the world around them.
She wrote, "Regina Adams is a leader in our school community. Her love for animals, plants, farming and other agricultural areas easily helps other people learn and enriches every aspect of her classroom. Parents comment about the depth of knowledge their children gain from her. She led other teachers in visiting a local turkey farm, grocery store and African grocery store. Related cooking activities helped the students understand the processes that change farm or grocery products."
In 2005, Regina received a grant from MAC to explore "Where Does My Food Come From?" She linked this theme to units from social studies and science as well as the state standards in language arts and math. Students learned about life cycles of plants and animals, community interrelationships, family living, environmental concerns, natural resources, seasonal changes, and effect of time and geography, especially related to foods.
MAC sponsored Regina's attendance at the National AITC Conference in Atlantic City in. She wrote us the day she returned to say, "I am still on a high of excitement; I woke up creating a book in my mind about growing beets with phonemics. I've never been to a conference where people were so hospitable and willing to share. This has been a highlight of my teaching career. Thank you for this honor of being Teacher of the Year and privilege of attending the National Conference."
Regina was raised in a dairy family in Springfield, Vermont. All seven children worked in the barn, fields, garden and house. She attended the University of Vermont, studying agriculture before switching to elementary education. She used this education to home-school her own four children and teach in private and public schools, the last ten at First Assembly Christian School. This summer Regina returned with her family to Vermont, where she will teach first grade.
2005 Teacher of the Year
William Pineda
MAC is proud to announce our Teacher of the Year for 2005. William Pineda is a seventh-grade life-science teacher at the Nissitissit Middle School in Pepperell. Bill has had a lifelong love affair with agriculture. Agricultural activities and concepts are part of his approach to Curriculum Frameworks.
Bill spent his teens working on various farms in central Massachusetts. Then he majored in Animal Science at the University of New Hampshire, specializing in poultry management and pathology. In the 1990s he joined the Peace Corps, first as a Poultry Extensionist in St. Vincent, West Indies and then working as a staff member in Washington, D.C., where he placed agriculture volunteers. He then became a Peace Corps Fellow and began his career teaching middle-school science.
Bill is starting his fourteenth year teaching and will continue running his small farm in Ashby, which provides some food as well as plants and animals for school. Students are involved in breeding rabbits, pigeons and rats to understand reproduction, ethics, nutrition, animal care and genetics. Each year, children select a rooster and hens from Bill's flock to be bred and 100 or more chicks are hatched in an incubator in the classroom.
Students are also involved in some landscaping of the school grounds. They plant and maintain a large garden, orchard, Christmas tree "plantation", and sugar bush. They raise all plants necessary for use in the classroom and collect sap to turn into maple syrup. The integration of agriculture and the environment are studied with topics such as the interaction of wildlife and plant communities with the school grounds. Students also maintain a bluebird trail, vernal pool study and a wildlife observation center.
Bill's classes are among the most popular in the school because he knows that middle-school students learn by doing. His greatest desire is to share his love of nature, agriculture and biology with his pupils and to contribute to maintaining an interest in keeping the rural undeveloped aspects to the towns in his school district.
2012 Massachusetts Agriculture in the Classroom Teacher of the Year Application
MAC is seeking nominations now for the 2012 MAC Teacher of the Year Award. Do you know a teacher who does an exceptional job of bringing agriculture alive in their classroom? Consider nominating them for this special award. Send a description of their agricultural classroom, and the reason that you recommend them for the award, to the address below. Applications are due March 15, 2012. The winner will be high-lighted in the Fall 2012 MAC newsletter and the award will be presented at our MAC Annual Conference in March of 2013.
