Educator of the Year

WAIC Recognizes 2011 Exemplary Educator
Beth Marlatt of Hulett Elementary School, in Hullet as the recipient of the
Wyoming Agriculture in the Classroom award.

Beth Marlatt is from Crook County, Wyoming where she teaches at Hulett Elementary School. She has spent her entire career in Crook County where she has taught kindergarten through eighth grade at one time or another after getting her start in a very rural country school on the Wyoming-Montana border.

Beth has integrated agriculture and the natural resources of Wyoming in to her classroom since the very beginning of her career as well as bringing those experiences to several classroom’s throughout Wyoming with such grant projects as Journey Thru Wyoming, student-made movies, field trips, classroom collaborations, on line games, WEN presentations and finally a series of books that celebrate Wyoming’s natural resources and agriculture.  This year’s hardcover book is called Rough and Tough: An Alphabet Book of Wyoming Cowboys and the Ranch Cattle Industry. Other books in the series are titled Bison on the Horizon and America’s First.

Her favorite challenge is to use her creativity and weave the Wyoming State Standards into integrated projects that are meaningful for her students. She specifically uses agriculture and local interest related content. Projects usually deal in a medium that is long lasting and intriguing to the learners. The projects tend to be long term, which gives the student’s practice in task and time commitment as well as experience some delayed gratification. The big projects are always created amidst a great mess, and many props. The projects are created with the help, input and guidance from the community members. The final projects are then shared and they celebrate with everyone in a big way, often there is a red carpet involved. Beth wants to weave all the skills together in practical way that stretches the students’ knowledge and application to their challenge their creative limits.

Beth holds a Master’s of Science in curriculum with an emphasis in gifted education and technology from Black Hills State University. She is a mentor teacher and an Instructional Facilitator for Hulett Elementary School.

She and her husband, Bill, a mixed animal veterinarian, live north of Beulah with their menagerie of large and small animals. Currently they are about to enter the world of teamsters with their pair of Gypsy Drum horses and a doctor’s buggy; hoping that only the horse feathers fly. Their son, Ryan is a director and rowing coach for a crew club in Tampa Bay, Florida.  Congratulations, Mrs. Marlatt!!