Growing Dreams: Mrs. Stone's Homecoming as a Teacher at Republic County High School.

Holly Stone is our new agriculture teacher here at Republic County Jr. senior highschool School. Mrs. Stone was previously our administrative assistant for a year. She has replaced the previous agriculture teacher Cara Holtorf who resigned this past summer.

Mrs. Stone wanting to become a teacher is a pretty recent thing. It started when someone asked her if she would possibly be interested in teaching AG. She has always enjoyed working with students and being a part of the day. She studied animal science in college but wished she had also gone into education. Mrs. Stone knew immediately when she was brought the opportunity that it would be an excellent match for her as she grew up in a rural area and can use her knowledge from that. As well as learning new things for herself in the classroom.

She plans on making whatever content she is teaching fun and interesting for her students. She quickly realized that wouldn't be the easiest. To combat the challenge of keeping a bunch of teenagers focused and interested, which to be honest isn't the easiest thing, she started being more upbeat and sharing stories that she has experienced with the subject she is in. She has seen some success in this. Every teacher dreads the question of how I will use this in real life or something along the lines, but Mrs. Stone informs her students on how they can and will use the information of questions in real life. This, with her amazing attitude and character, makes for a great teacher.

Mrs. Stone has had one other agricultural job in the past, at Streck in La Vista, NE. Streck develops, and manufactures, products in, hematology, immunology, molecular diagnostics, cell stabilization, infectious diseases, and urinalysis for the clinic and research laboratories. While Mrs. Stone was there she worked with bovine blood, and she would separate the platelets, red blood cells, and white blood cells. It's quite a stretch from teaching AG. But Stone says she learned a lot from working with an amazing group of people.

Mrs. Stone has a bright future at Republic County High School. We really enjoy having her teacher here and are infinitely grateful for her deciding to teach and work with us at Republic County USD 109.

Kelan Haberstroh

Communications Director/ Journalist