BATON ROUGE - The Louisiana Department of Education named an East Baton Rouge Parish teacher the 2024 Louisiana Teacher of the Year.

Kylie Altier is a first-grade teacher at Buchanan Elementary School. Since joining the school, Altier has started a Garden Club and led professional development in her district.

As a teacher, Altier believes every student deserves to have an engaging curriculum while also having their learning tied to their respective needs and interests.

Altier pursued grants to create a school garden focused on urban agriculture, a mobile kitchen where her students can cook the vegetables they harvest and designed a curriculum employing virtual reality headsets to increase experiential learning for her students.

In addition, Altier's students have gotten to interview a New York Times Best Selling Author, LSU's Tiger Girls and curators from the Museum of Natural Science.

Before coming to Baton Rouge, Altier worked in Texas, where she received many accolades. In 2019, she was named Teacher of the Year for her school, district and region. She also was named the Mentor Teacher of the Year for Stephen F. Austin University.