UTAH'S TEACHER OF THE YEAR

BY: RYAN BARTLETT, DIRECTOR OF STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS, UTAH STATE BOARD OF EDUCATION

An old copy box sits on the filing cabinet behind Mr. Warnick’s desk. He’s had the box for years. It’s filled with letters, “thank you” cards, wedding invitations, pictures, and graduation announcements — all from former students who have been inspired, guided, or in some other way positively affected by Chad Warnick, the small-town agriculture teacher who was selected as Utah’s 2023 Teacher of the Year. That box is Warnick’s motivation. It is the reason he teaches. “That’s my go-to box,” Warnick says, “I can go in there and get strength whenever I’ve had a hard day.”

Warnick grew up in Delta, where he has been teaching agriculture education at the Delta Technology Center for the past 17 years. As a boy, Chad was involved in 4H and FFA, youth agriculture programs that instilled in him leadership qualities and an early desire to help young people succeed and achieve their fullest potential.

Shortly after he began his studies at Utah State University, Warnick had a discussion with a professor who told him that if he really wanted to have a positive influence on the lives of youth, a career in teaching would be the best way for him to accomplish that goal. That conversation sent Warnick on a new trajectory. In his words, “15 minutes after that conversation, I had a four-year plan, and I was going to become an Ag teacher. Since then, I have never looked back, and it’s been one of the best decisions of my life.”

For Warnick, Delta, surrounded by farmland, is an ideal location for teaching and learning about agriculture. With fewer than 5,000 people living in the town, teachers and students are better able to build close and lasting relationships with members of the community, including farmers and small business owners who assist with school projects and hands-on learning opportunities. “Our community has been all-in on supporting our students and our school programs,” Warnick says. Local florists come in to teach the students floral design, local farmers assist with crop and livestock lessons, and the local butcher even delivers animal materials to Warnick’s class when they have their dissection labs.

Warnick believes strongly in providing his students with hands-on learning experiences, and in integrating feedback from his students into his teaching methods. In his view, this is the best way to help develop competent, confident leaders. In his early days of teaching, one student in an agriculture class asked Warnick if they were ever going to actually work with live animals. Warnick paused, reflected on the question for a moment, and then immediately stopped the lesson to lead an impromptu brainstorming session with his students, in which they pitched ideas and developed a plan for integrating work with animals into their educational experience.

Several weeks later, he accompanied his students to a local school board meeting, where they proposed their plan, and were given the green light to begin building a pig facility near the school. Since then, Warnick and his students have worked to expand the hands-on experience, procuring dairy cattle, chickens, goats, a pheasant facility, and more recently, an orchard. Warnick says that all these projects stemmed from student interest and from his belief that students should have some say in choosing what they want for their education.

Warnick now teaches his students in the very same classroom where his father, Waldo Warnick, Jr., who was also honored as a Utah Teacher of the Year for 1991, once taught woodshop class for so many years. At the Utah Teacher of the Year banquet, a packed room of educators, administrators, friends, and family stood and applauded Warnick as he made his way to the stage to deliver his speech. One of the smiling faces in the audience was Warnick’s proud father. Everyone in that room could see what a great educator Warnick is and how deserving he was of the award.

Warnick says he hopes that for many years to come, he can continue to work with young Utahns and help them to realize their potential and succeed. Clearly, he’ll soon need a much larger box for the filing cabinet behind his desk.