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Melanie Bloom was named Iowa Teacher of the Year on Dec. 9 in front of her Sioux Central school students, staff and faculty.

SIOUX RAPIDS — Melanie Bloom said she wanted to be a teacher.

Today, that calling and her strive for excellence has earned her the title of “2025 Iowa Teacher of the Year.” The honor was awarded Dec. 9 by Gov. Kim Reynolds and Iowa Department of Education Director McKenzie Snow before an assembly of K-12 students, faculty, staff and family members at Sioux Central High School in Sioux Rapids.

The “Teacher of the Year” award recognizes exceptional teachers who demonstrate excellence in the classroom and who have made a significant impact on student outcomes and their fellow educators. Bloom said other things the Iowa Department of Education looks for are those who give back to the profession, and teaching beyond textbooks and blackboards.

Bloom was selected from nine finalists who were named in November as Iowa’s first-ever Regional Teachers of the Year, representing all education regions of the state. Bloom also serves as the Prairie Lakes Regional Teacher of the Year.

Bloom, who grew up on a farm near Lake Park (Dickinson County), has taught agriculture at the Sioux Central School District for 16 years. She began her ag education career there, and once there, set anchor and never looked back.

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-Submitted photo Melanie Bloom, center, is shown with her family, including husband, Stephen Bloom, and daughters (left to right): Annalise, Linnea and Karina.

“I was in the principal’s office when the call came in that I had received this award, and I was speechless,” said Bloom. “It’s overwhelming and unbelievable. This award in no way says I’m the best teacher — I may be just the right person at the right time to serve in this way. We all know there are some phenomenal teachers out there. I’m just happy that I get to represent them in the coming year.”

Bloom said at least part of the criteria for judgment from the federal and state level was work-based learning, careers and what happens post-graduation.

“I think my application came through in the right year for that,” she said, adding that ag educators and FFA members have been doing work-based learning and supervised ag experiences (SAE’s) for more than 100 years.

“It’s something we do very well, so I’m excited to take some of that experience to the state and national level to help others understand the opportunities our students might have if we did this school-wide for all of our students.”

Bloom is one of only two known agriculture educators in Iowa who have ever won this title in the last 40 years — she is the second. The other was Dr. Thomas Paulsen, Morningside University professor and department head of Applied Agriculture and Food Studies Department, who was a high school ag educator from Carroll at the time he won in 2000.

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Melanie Bloom accepts the 2025 Iowa Teacher of the Year Award from Gov. Kim Reynolds in a ceremony Dec. 9 at Sioux Central High School.

“When I heard Dr. Paulsen speak as a student in college, I never dreamed I would be anywhere near the same level as what he was talking about at the time, so it’s a cool ‘full-circle’ moment,” she said.

As the 2025 Iowa Teacher of the Year, Bloom will be part of a national cohort of 55 Teachers of the Year (from all 50 states, plus the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, military-based schools, etc.) who will gather for events a couple of times during the year, including a possible conference on work-based learning, and the announcement of the National Teacher of the Year. Last year that gathering and announcement was at the White House, hosted by the president and first lady.

Bloom will be part of that pool of competitors for the national title.

Starting out

Bloom, the daughter of (the late) Bruce and Vance Hjelm, was a farm girl and attended Harris-Lake Park High School, graduating in 1997. She went on to attend Iowa State University to earn a bachelor’s degree in both ag education and animal science, and finished her master’s degree in ag education at ISU as well.

She said growing up on a farm during the 1980s farm crisis remained with her as she grew into adulthood, and as she considered career paths, she knew teaching was at the top.

“The Iowa FFA president visited our class once and he asked me what I wanted to be, and I told him I wanted to be an elementary teacher. He stopped and just looked at me and said, ‘You’re in ag classes and you clearly love agriculture — why wouldn’t you be an ag teacher?'”

She said at the time, teaching agriculture wasn’t something she really thought a woman could do, since she had never met a woman ag teacher during her high school years in the ’90s.

“I had just never thought about it — or that it could be an option for me,” she said. “When I started teaching in 2002, there were at most eight or 10 female ag teachers in the state. Today we’re probably close to (a ratio of) 50-50, if not a little heavier on the female side. That’s a huge change in 25 years.”

Bloom said she took seven years off (2014-2021) from classroom teaching to work from home to write and implement project-based agri-science curriculum for the National Curriculum for Ag Science Case, and said it’s gratifying to know her ag curriculum has the chance to be taught in ag classrooms all over the United States. She plans on teaching ag for the duration of her teaching career. She said with that experience she learned from some of the best ag educators in the nation about what works or does not work in ag education curriculum.

“When I was growing up our classrooms were lecture-based, note-taking and tests — but that’s not what my classroom looks like today,” she said. “We do as much hands-on, project-based learning as we can. My classroom looks chaotic, but that’s what works.”

She said the Sioux Central school district just completed construction of a greenhouse for ag instruction, and will soon be remodeling a classroom for the ag program.

“I’m so proud to be part of this district and be able to use the facilities they are constructing for use in the ag program,” said Bloom. “Sioux Central didn’t have an ag program before I started here, so I’m excited about all of that.”

Bloom said it’s been her great joy to see her students set tough goals for themselves, then achieve them, and be recognized for achieving them.

She said she tries to instill in her students a work ethic that will get them places.

“I encourage them to put some effort into the hard things,” she said. “… because even when you fail, you’re failing forward, but if you never try the hard things, you don’t grow.”

Her family includes her husband, Stephen Bloom, who farms near Marathon; and their three daughters — Annaliese, a freshman at ISU studying agronomy; Linnea, a senior at Sioux Central who is interested in an animal science career, and Karina, a sophomore at Sioux Central.

“All of our girls have been in ag and FFA, and I joked at the assembly that it probably isn’t easy having your ag teacher living in the same house as them. They didn’t laugh as hard as everyone else did,” she said with a laugh.

Bloom said she feels blessed to be part of a progressive school district.

“We’ve had some phenomenal educators come through here who have encouraged me over the years, and several times we’ve been a district that has been out in front doing things that may or may not have worked,” she said, “but we take chances and try things out, and grow and learn. I love that as a staff, that has been the ‘MO’ (mode of operating) at Sioux Central for years.”