Annabell Bonte lives on a dairy goat farm near the Wisconsin border. Right now, the farm is milking about 150 of its roughly 300 goats. The milk goes to a cheese factory somewhere across the state line in Wisconsin. And yes, they occasionally eat the goats, too. Roasted. She has no trouble with this. When you grow up around 300 of any animal, the distinction between livestock and pets becomes pretty clear.

That farm background is the thread that runs through everything Annabell has done at Byron High School — and explains, better than anything else, why a senior who planned to become a veterinarian is now planning to become an agriculture teacher instead.

She found FFA (Future Farmers of America) in sixth grade but didn't fully grasp what she'd gotten into until her freshman year, when older members of the chapter took her under their wing and showed her the scope of what the program actually involves. "I was flabbergasted," she says. "I had no clue it was this big." She's been deep in it ever since. Her favorite competitive event is veterinary science — a contest that covers hands-on clinical techniques, equipment identification, breed identification across a wide range of species, and both math and general knowledge exams. The breed list alone spans dogs, cats, dairy and beef cattle, goats, sheep, pigs, reptiles, small mammals, and birds. She has competed in vet science for four years and, by her own modest assessment, done pretty well.

The farm gave her an early edge. The goat operation introduced her to laparoscopic artificial insemination — a surgical technique used in high-value livestock breeding — and she has presented on the subject through 4-H, where she has also been active for about six years. Showing her goats in FFA and 4-H competitions has built her confidence with animals and deepened her understanding of the care, reproduction, and management side of agricultural work. She's been in 4-H long enough to know it runs until age 18 and plans to stay involved up to that line.

The shift toward teaching happened gradually, driven by the kids. For the past four years, Byron FFA members have visited the middle school to talk with younger students about the ag program and encourage them to get involved. This past year, the chapter brought Ag Olympics to the elementary school during PE — a new program still being refined that so far includes bale stacking, barrel racing on stick horses, and "pig walking," where kids use a fly swatter to guide a balloon across a course. The elementary students loved it. Watching them respond is what moved Annabelle from wanting to work with animals to wanting to work with people who work with animals.

Her academic path is practical and intentional. She's currently taking dual credit courses through Highland Community College in Freeport — including an agricultural economics class she did not enjoy ("I didn't realize it was math when I went into it"), a computer ag class she liked considerably more, and a cannabis law and regulations course she took out of curiosity and found more complex than expected. After graduation, she plans to earn her associate's degree before transferring to either the University of Wisconsin-Platteville or Illinois State University to complete a degree in agricultural education.

She wants to teach high school ag in Illinois. The reason is simple: her family is here, and she's not leaving them. "My family is really important to me ," she says, without any self-consciousness. She has five sisters — two older, two younger, still in the Byron school system, and one stepsister in Poplar Grove — and splits her time between her dad's house in Byron and her mom's house nearby. The family is the anchor.

The goats are, too, in their way. Three hundred of them, give or take, producing milk that ends up in someone's cheese. It's an unglamorous foundation for a future teacher of agriculture — early mornings, practical decisions, the daily logistics of a working farm. But it's also exactly the kind of experience that turns a classroom into something real.