With his first academic year as Ag Education instructor and FFA advisor at Ravenna Public Schools (RPS) nearing its end and a $5,500,000 bond vote set to decide the future of the campus’s agricultural offerings, Grant Lewandowski says “things have been going really well. “I really like the school,” he said in an interview last week. “I like the people—the staff, the kids. I feel like I’m fitting in really well.” A native of Loup City and a graduate of Loup City High School (LCHS) with the Class of 2016, Lewandowski “comes from a family of teachers and coaches. “I was kind of born into teaching and coaching,” he noted. “My parents [Rob and Dallas Lewandowski] both were teachers. My mom taught elementary at Arcadia when I was growing up, and my dad taught wood shop at Loup City and coached football, basketball, and golf for probably fifteen years. “My dad taught me for a few years before he retired...He passed away last year…and hearing stories about him as an educator from other people he taught really inspired me,” the ag instructor noted. “And my mom was an inspiration as well… She currently [is a teaching and learning coordinator] at ESU 10 in Kearney.” Lewandowski also said that he had spent much of his adolescence involved in FFA and agriculture. “Loup City had had a small [FFA] chapter,” he said. “When I was in high school, we had a teacher come in [Cale Harrington] who…kind of revitalized the chapter and got it going the way it is now. “I was in high school when everything was going on to grow that chapter and kind of make it into what it is... It was pretty cool; we got to kind of start it from scratch and build it up.” Although he grew up within the municipal limits of Loup City, Lewandowski said that “basically all” his friends from high school had been “farm kids. “I spent a lot of time out on their farms helping them, and I always worked on a farm or a ranch. I worked for several farmers and ranchers as I was going through high school, and even college.” After graduating high school in 2016, Lewandowski enrolled at the University of Nebraska—Lincoln, where he majored in agricultural education. “In addition to FFA and ag work, I had also done some coaching and was a teaching assistant in high school, so I kind of got to see the teaching and coaching side of things,” he said. “I wasn’t sure if I wanted to be a farmer or a rancher, or be a teacher. So, I said, ‘Heck with it. I am going to hit it in the middle.’” In college, Lewandowski continued to return to Loup City over summer breaks, working for Setlik Feed Yard north of town. In 2021, he was assigned to student teach at Burwell Public Schools under Ag Educator Phil Simpson; he graduated with his agricultural education degree in fall of that year. Following graduation, Lewandowski spent about one-and-a-half years teaching and coaching at Sumner-Eddyville-Miller Schools (SEM), before taking a position at Franklin Public Schools for the 2023–2024 academic year. “I started at SEM as a long-term sub for half a year,” he said. “They had someone leave mid-year, so I filled that opening and then was there for a full [academic] year after that.” In addition to teaching agriculture, Lewandowski had also been head football coach and assistant basketball coach at SEM. At Franklin, Lewandowski had continued to teach agriculture while serving as the district’s high school assistant football coach and assistant basketball coach, and head junior high basketball coach. He made the move to RPS last year in an attempt to get closer to home, learning about the opening from friend and former LCHS alumnus Cody Chilewski, the former RPS Ag Education instructor. Chilewski had left RPS at the end of the 2023–2024 academic year to take a position at his old alma mater, and had let Lewandowski know about the opening. “Cody and I are friends from high school,” said the new RPS ag teacher. “I knew he’d found another job, and I was kind of looking to get closer to home. So, I applied.” Lewandowski characterized his job as agriculture instructor and FFA advisor as a “pretty wild” and “very busy” job, entailing multiple facets of ag education. “In FFA, I really try to make it a student-run organization as much as I can, just helping the kids to get what they need to pursue what they want to pursue,” he said. “Right now, we’re getting the greenhouse set up and ready for 4,000 plants that are going to be coming in on [March 3rd],” he added. “When it comes to contests like range judging, we have a good setup here, because we have a pasture that we own to the north of the school; we can walk through that and identify different plants and weeds and stuff like that.” The new ag instructor is also the assistant junior high football coach and assistant high school boys’ basketball coach at RPS. “Those were a big part of my school experience,” he said. “I was a four-sport athlete growing up—doing football, basketball, golf, and baseball in the summer.” His hope as an educator, FFA advisor, and coach, said Lewandowski, is to “be a sponge, take in as much information as people are willing to give me,” and to bring that information into the classroom, the FFA meetings, and onto the field. “There’s always more you can learn; you can always be better,” he said. “I haven’t been teaching that long yet, but I know lots of people who have, and I’m hoping to make use of them.” Lewandowski currently resides “almost exactly halfway between Loup City and Ravenna.” He said last week that he sees himself remaining with RPS well into the future. “I love it here,” he said. “I can’t say enough good things about it. I really enjoy the people that I work with, and the kids are great kids.”
