2026 Grants in Place Project Spotlight: Learning by Doing: Finding the Solution to Food Insecurity - Crane, MO

Nathan Hensley, a first year agriculture education teacher at Crane High School, is a 2026 Grants in Place grantee. Each year, the Grants in Place program awards rural educators from across the country grants to foster Place-Based Education projects that connect their classrooms to their local communities. Nathan’s project is designed to identify and address a vital issue, Learning by doing: finding the solution to food insecurity. Together, Nathan and his students at Crane High School are learning by solving problems and creating farm projects together in the small community of Crane, MO, about an hour southeast of Springfield, MO.

Growing up helping on his grandparent’s farm about 30 miles west of Crane in Pierce City, Nathan had experience with quarter horses and raising steers. Although his background was in agriculture beginning at a young age, Nathan’s initial career aspirations were in law enforcement. He recounts his senior year of high school realization that he wanted to become an ag teacher, which was influenced by his positive experience with his very own ag teacher and now mentor. Nathan mentioned he was drawn into teaching agriculture specifically because he “always felt that it was practical to whatever situation, whether it was the ag business side of things, dealing with numbers, or growing your own livestock, your own produce, or even just changing out your own outlet in your house.”

With the idea of enhancing hands-on learning in his own classroom, Nathan was researching grant opportunities in an effort to secure funding to pave the way. “I wanted to incorporate more hands-on learning. This was one of the ways that I thought of doing a community service project, because we could tie that in with FFA, ag, and different things too,” says Nathan. Since beginning the process of the project planning, Nathan has seen a positive response from his students with more tangible lessons.

Nathan has seen first hand how students are learning by doing, even with bumps along the way. Instead of having four raised garden beds, they have three due to a measuring and cutting mishap. “We had two separate sized boards, and the student was supposed to cut the shorter boards to construct the garden boxes and the student ended up cutting one of our long boards instead,” chuckled Nathan. “It was a learning experience for the student, because he learned to follow the plans a little bit better.” Alongside the garden beds, students are planting vegetable seeds in the school’s greenhouse, and are beginning the process of building the chicken coop.

A large component of the project Nathan is leading involves service to the broader community of Crane. Nine FFA officers from Crane High School have been involved with the project collecting community data that has informed what food is harder to access locally. Nathan identified early that his students, rather than himself, would be the best fit to gather that data, as they “grew up in the community, they have that connection with a lot of the community members. They're able to approach them a lot easier. They're able to identify community members that may need those vegetables or may need meat from the poultry.”

Nathan’s project reflects the core principles of Place-Based Education, an approach that connects classroom learning to the local community, environment, and economy. Through the construction of garden beds and a chicken coop, Crane High School students are not only learning agricultural skills but also investigating a real community issue, food insecurity, and developing solutions that directly benefit their neighbors. Projects like Nathan’s demonstrate how rural educators lead meaningful learning experiences rooted in place.

With a strong start to his Grants in Place project and first year of teaching under his belt, Nathan mentioned that one of his goals is to “expand these kids' horizons and offer them more opportunities. I want to put 100% into the program and grow it better than what it was, not necessarily stepping on previous teachers' toes or anything, but growing it bigger than what they had.” Stories like Nathan’s highlight the leadership of rural educators and the impact of Place-Based Education in action. Through hands-on projects rooted in community needs, teachers like Nathan are helping students connect learning to real-world challenges while strengthening their hometowns.

Nathan is one of 31 rural educators part of the 2026 Grants in Place Awardees. Each year, the Grants in Place program awards rural educators from across the country with grants to foster Place-Based Education projects that connect their classrooms to their local communities. Grants in Place is facilitated through Rural Schools Collaborative’s Regional Hubs; whenever possible, RSC awards one grant per partner in our network. In addition to supporting teachers from within each hub, RSC awards a small number of national selections to educators from outside of our Regional Hub Network.

We would like to thank Nathan for allowing Rural Schools Collaborative to visit his classroom and see first-hand how his project is going. We also would like to thank our Missouri Hub partners at Missouri State University and the Community Foundation of the Ozarks for their support of projects like these.

To learn more about Nathan’s project and the other Grants in Place grantees, click here.