Stanton’s Brooke named as Lakin Oustanding Teacher

A recent Stanton hire has been selected to the illustrious list of Lakin Outstanding Teachers.
Annie Brooke, Ag and 8th grade science instructor and FFA instructor for the district was named as one of the 2026 Lakin Outstanding teachers at a special ceremony held at the Stanton School District. Brooke said she’s lived in the Southwest Iowa area for much of her life prior to being a teacher.
“I actually grew up in the booming town of Bethesda. That’s where I started out when I was little. I went to Essex until I was in the second grade, then transferred to Clarinda when my mom basically switched jobs, and we moved to and started living in Clarinda. In my middle school years, we moved up to New Market, and I still attended Clarinda schools, and graduated from the district in 2017,” Brooke said.
After her graduation, Brooke moved to central Iowa and enrolled at Iowa State University.
“I lived in Ames for about four years and did a whole bunch of internships during that time where I lived in various parts of Iowa. Also, when I was in college, I started dating my now husband, and I knew that I would have to move back to this area since he’s a farmer. I started teaching at Riverside in Oakland, and then once this job opened up, it made sense for me to apply to Stanton, and was hired in 2025. I’m super thankful I was able to get it because now I’m making a 13-minute drive compared to the 54-minute drive that I was making every day,” advised Brooke.
After she got to college, Brooke said she didn’t immediately go down the path of becoming a teacher.
“When I first went into college. I took about a week of Ag business, and I took one economics class, and I was like, this is not for me. That is way too much math for me. I then transferred to do Ag communications. I was thinking about doing things like maybe working for KMA or looking to do newspaper stuff, but I still wasn’t entirely sure,” stated Brooke. “I liked the communication. I like teaching about agriculture. That was really my main passion. I was probably the end of my sophomore year of college when I started kind of kicking around if this would truly be something I would want to do.”
Brooke said her Ag teacher at Clarinda High School became the catalyst in her becoming an Ag teacher herself.
“He was a fantastic teacher that knew how to push kids, how to grow kids, how to make them find what their passion was. When I brought it up to him and one of the fellow Ag teachers that’s in Atlantic, they were like, ‘yeah, we’re waiting for you to change your major to Ag education. Why haven’t you changed it already?’ And I asked them if they really thought I could do it? And both of them recommended that I change my major. So finally, my junior year, I changed it to Ag education.
In the end, it was a great high school Ag teacher that inspired me to want to encourage students in the future. I also had a lot of great FFA experiences throughout my high school years,” explained Brooke.
Brooke said that when it comes to teaching Ag, it’s a little bit different than teaching in a classroom setting.
“There are 96 pages of standards, and you can honestly make anything fit that you want to. When it comes to curriculum, I usually do something that I think is going to be beneficial for the kids and something that’s going to interest them the most. When it comes to Ag, the main one that’s always going to get kids is going to be talking about animals. Animal science is something that we always kind of focus on. A lot of kids are always very interested in it because there are a lot of needs for animals in the area,” commented Brooke. “Also, I always love to focus on plant science as well. We have a little greenhouse, and so I’m getting the kids into the greenhouse, teaching them how to grow plants, how to understand fertilizers, how to treat for pests, how to basically kind of create a small business with these plants. From there,  wefigure out how much money we can sell them for to not only go back into our FFA chapter, but make sure that we are making up for the money that we have spent. So in an average year, I’m gauging interest, and then from there I kind of create what I either think we need to improve upon or areas that could be more beneficial for them in the future.”
Brooke said for the students in this year’s class, they’re doing a form of Ag leadership class.
“We’ll focus on cover letters, resumes, how to communicate with people. How to write a proper email is something that a lot of kids don’t always know, how to do taxes, a funny one is how to sign your name in cursive, just little tricks that are going to help to prepare the kids for the future.”
Even thought Brooke has only been out of college for around six years, Brooke said the landscape of agriculture has still changed a lot in that time.
“One thing that has greatly changed has to do with the technology aspect and growth in the Ag field. That’s something that I’m always trying to work on. I don’t think students always recognize that the Ag industry is so broad, and that if you don’t want to work on tractors, that’s fine. If you don’t want to drive a tractor, that’s fine too, but you can still work for John Deere or you can still work for a variety of companies when it comes to either coding or GPS, and things like that,” Brooek said. “When I was in school, we focused a lot more on the production aspect. We learned about how you raise cattle, how you would map out things, but it was a lot more by hand, on paper. Now we’re starting to focus more on technology and computers. Now we have to focus on showing these kids there’s still a ginormous area of agriculture that has needs to be met, and that is a lot more updated than a lot of people remember or think about.”
The Lakin Outstanding Teacher Award ceremony took place for Brooke earlier this year. She said she had no idea of what to expect.
“I was told that we were going to have an assembly. Mrs. Elwood had told us the week before there was a pep rally next week on a Tuesday. I actually thought it was on the Friday before, but se reminded me that it was the following Tuesday And I remember on Friday going, okay, so we have a pep rally today. I had a thousand things going on that day, and I knew once I finished the pep rally I had a lot of things to work on. She told me I couldn’t go down one stairwell because there were surprise guests waiting. I started to give her a hard time and go down anyway but she urged me to use the other stairwell and I didn’t think anything of it at the time, I just went down it.”
Once the assembly was revealed as a Lakin presentation, the secrecy made more sense, but even then, as a new instructor in Stanton, Book had no idea what was about to come next.
“This was only my first year at Stanton, so what was I to expect? When they came out and started talking, it wasn’t until they said the word “agriculture” that it started to click and I was like, ‘oh, that’s me. I teach agriculture.’ So it was a very big surprise,” stated Brooke. “One of my previous students nominated me, and so after the presentation, they gave me a little short copy of what she said when she answered the questions of and why she thought I deserved this award. That was really fun, just to read and to see how I impacted her. Now I’m excited to go to her wedding here in a few months.”
Brooke attributes the students she’s worked with as being the major reason she was able to win this year.
“I am thankful for the students that I have. You can do a lot of things as a teacher, but if you don’t have great students, there are not a lot of great things that you can accomplish. They want to do well, they want to learn, they want to have fun. And as long as they want to have fun, really, you can do some of the greatest things ever in your classroom,” Brooke commented.
As part of being selected, Brooke received a $10,000 cash prize, and a $2,500 donation to the school. Brooke said the money has already been spoken for.
“My husband and I farm, so really, $10,000, doesn’t last us very long because there’s a lot of bills that we can always pay off, but we did have the opportunity to take a little family trip this year. We went to Florida for a few days, so that was super nice to have that money just so we could spend a little time together,” advised Brooke.
Brooke added that she’s had a great time settling into the Stanton School District.
‘I didn’t come in until October of last year due to maternity leave, and I am a big personality. It’s been super fun. Of course, the person right next to me is Charm Carpenter, who teaches English and journalism. Charm has been an absolute hoot to work with and she was so excited for me. There were so many things that were going on that week so was just a lot on my plate. Being named a Lakin Outstanding Teacher was a really big opportunity for me to just really soak in. All the work that I do really does pay off, and I am impacting kids,” Brooke explained. “Sometimes, with all the things that you have to accomplish, you sometimes ask yourself, ‘Am I really doing enough for these kids? Are the kids really seeing what everything I’m doing is for them?’ That award certainly showed it. “