For the past decade, Ashley Buchanon has been an educator and a Kentucky mathematics teacher leader.
Buchanon began her educator journey at Community Education, an afterschool and summer care program in Bowling Green.
At the time, she was pursuing her bachelor’s degree in elementary education at Western Kentucky University. Buchanon would implement the skills she learned in class, such as using art tactics to make learning math more fun for students, while caring for the children in the program.
This experience ignited her love of teaching and inspired her to continue to pursue her degree and become a first-generation college graduate.
“This was my first experience with kids and I loved it,” she said.
After she graduated from Western Kentucky University with a bachelor’s degree, she went back to school to get a master’s in elementary education.
Now, Buchanon teaches 4th-grade math and coaches archery at Rockfield Elementary (Warren County).
Buchanon serves on Rockfield Elementary’s school-based decision-making council. She also was part of the panel that chose her school’s new principal.
“Administration makes or breaks a school,” she said. “That is why I wanted to be a part of deciding what kind of leadership my school would have.”
Based on her exemplary work as an educator in Kentucky, she was named as one of the 2023 Kentucky Teacher Achievement Award winners in the elementary school category.
Buchanon was honored to receive the recognition, but she also recognized that she was just one of many educators doing an outstanding job in the classroom.
“Teachers in general need to be noticed. I’m not any better than any other teacher, I just so happened to be noticed,” she said. “I am a representative for every teacher, and I want to be that voice that tells them, ‘You really are making a difference. Keep doing what you’re doing.’”
When Buchanon is not teaching in her classroom in Bowling Green, she enjoys traveling and camping with her husband, Chris, and their three children.
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