SWCDs Area VI President Justin House presented Danielle Brown, former Perdido School fifth grade teacher, the Outstanding Teacher of the Year award during the Annual Area VI SWCDs Meeting held Sept. 15 in Monroeville, Alabama.

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Danielle Brown, former Perdido Elementary School fifth grade teacher, has been named the Outstanding Teacher of the Year for Alabama's Area VI Soil and Water Conservation Districts (SWCDs). Area President Justin House presented her the award during the Annual Area VI SWCDs Meeting held Sept. 15 in Monroeville, Alabama.

Beginning in 2020, Brown's students participated in the District's Conservation Stewardship Poster Contest. This year, Brown won the District's Participation Award.

In 2021, Brown launched an effort to construct a pollinator garden at Perdido Elementary School in memory of Gifted Teacher Jill Jones. Baldwin SWCD donated $500 to purchase native pollinator plants and other supplies for the garden. Perdido School students installed the plants and created a beautiful space under Brown's direction.

Brown used the pollinator garden during a Monarch Migration Project.

She received a $500 teacher grant in May 2021 from the North Baldwin Coalition for Excellence in Education for the project. Her students then raised, released and tagged their own monarchs, and they continue to monitor the Monarch Watch website to see if any have been collected.

Then, Brown's students formed teaching groups to teach other classes how to build, create and protect pollinator gardens and native species in their own yards. As part of these lessons, students taught others the importance of protecting the number of monarchs and how monarchs are indicator species. Students created informational walls for others to see their findings, created monarch magnets to sell to raise money for the garden and created origami monarch hall displays.

"Getting (students) excited about their environment is a privilege and an honor," Brown said.

Brown invited agents from the Alabama Cooperative Extension System into the classroom to speak on a variety of topics, including identifying and controlling invasive species in backyard environments and bringing awareness to endangered species in our area.

Inspired after a lesson on how trash is processed in Baldwin County, some of Brown's students created a recycling program for Perdido Elementary School, and they host an annual trash pickup day where each grade level tries to pick up as much trash on campus as possible.

In 2019, Brown and Extension Agenda Sarah Butterworth launched a 4-H Club at Perdido School. Topics covered include how to code and how farmers use coding with tractors/equipment. Drone pilots were also invited to speak with students about their jobs and how they help farmers in the area with their drones.

Each spring, students incubate and hatch their own chicks, before teaching other classes about the chicken life cycle, caring for chickens and how to harvest eggs. Students then adopt the chicks.

Brown also conducts regular nature walks to identify various species of trees and plants, encourages students to participate in the annual Alabama Coastal Foundation's "Kids Coastal Quiz," and takes her students to Dauphin Island each year to learn about watersheds and how north Baldwin County (Perdido River and Splinter Hill Bog) are connected to the watershed system.

Brown taught in Baldwin County for over 19 years, and four years at Perdido Elementary School. In January 2022, she was named Perdido School Teacher of the Year. She currently teaches at Flomaton Elementary School.