WHS teacher selected for national award

NEW ORLEANS, LA. – Worland High School teacher, Grace Godfrey, is one of six educators nationwide who received the 2021 National Association of Agricultural Educators Teachers Teacher Mentor award, presented during the 2021 NAAE Convention, Nov. 30 through Dec. 4, in New Orleans.

The NAAE Teacher Mentor Award is presented to an NAAE member who has excelled in preparing beginning agricultural educators into the profession by offering advice and guiding them to their own professional strengths. The NAAE Teacher Mentor Award is sponsored by CEV Multimedia.

According to a press release from NAAE, Grace Godfrey’s philosophy of mentoring revolves around the Three C’s: Consultant, Counselor and Cheerleader. As a consultant to her mentees, Godfrey provides information, tips, guidelines, and other necessary information for them to be successful. As a counselor, she believes the best she can do for her mentees is to listen with an open mind and help them brainstorm possible solutions. As a cheerleader, Godfrey believes that her role is to pick her mentees up when things get tough, point out the positives and reassure them that there is light at the end of the tunnel.

Godfrey spends a large amount of her time consulting, counseling and cheering on young ag teachers within Wyoming and beyond. She makes a point to stay in contact with the student teachers that she formerly supervised as they begin their careers in their own high schools. She also makes herself available to all other agriculture teachers in her area and they know that they can call her for questions and advice whenever need be.

One area that she frequently helps young teachers with is the online record keeping system called AET. She has had many phone calls, Zoom meetings, and face-to-face meetings to help these beginning teachers make sense of the system and how to best support their students when they begin using it.

Through instruction, Godfrey has been able to make a huge impact on the new agriculture teachers she’s worked with. Being certified in CASE Curriculum, has allowed her to share that knowledge with the student teachers she has had over the years. This way, her student teachers were able to focus primarily on improving their instruction rather than getting bogged down in the planning. Godfrey has also been able to mentor her former students through experiential learning as an agriculture teacher. Since her own students had Supervised Agricultural Experiences (SAEs), her mentees were able to visit their projects outside of school and learn how to conduct an “SAE visit.” Through practicing their visits in real time, they were able to familiarize themselves with the process and ask questions on what they didn’t understand as well as what they could do better. These hands-on experiences that Godfrey facilitated for her mentees will be of great to use them as they continue in their careers.

As an FFA advisor herself, Godfrey has given access to her curriculum and FFA materials to the young agriculture teachers she has worked with. She encourages them to make copies of what they think they may need in their future as educators. This allows these beginning teachers to have a foundation of somewhere to start when they enter their own classrooms. She also shares with them how she keeps track of all the FFA events and activities that her chapter does, in effort to reduce any stress or anxiety that young teachers may have about being an FFA Chapter Advisor.

Godfrey requires her student teachers to be involved in all aspects of her agricultural education program because that is what she requires of herself. She encourages her mentees to make connections with the community such as the Washakie County Extension Office and the Career and Technical Education Advisory Committee. Godfrey believes that by seeing how valuable community partnerships are to an agricultural education program will encourage them to make strong connections of their own in the future.

NAAE is the professional organization for agricultural educators with over 8,000 members nationwide. It provides members with professional networking and development opportunities, professional liability coverage, and extensive awards and recognition programs. The mission of NAAE is “professionals providing agricultural education for the global community through visionary leadership, advocacy and service.” The NAAE office is in Lexington, Kentucky.