Fan of the Year uses Packers games to teach first-grade students

Green Bay Packers fans are everywhere, even Middlebury, Connecticut, where first-grade teacher Ashley Christensen might be creating more.

Christensen is Green Bay’s Fan of the Year and nominee to be NFL Fan of the Year. The contest celebrates football fans whose fandom go above and beyond to inspire others. The winner will be announced during Super Bowl week in February.

Packers fans have had good results in recent contests. Tom Grossi was named the NFL Fan of the Year for 2023, while Matthias Kraus won the German NFL Fan of the Year award and was the Packers’ International Fan of the Year nominee for 2024. Both Grossi and Krause announced draft picks from the stage during the 2025 NFL Draft held at Lambeau Field in Green Bay.

Voting is open until Feb. 4. Fans can vote here.

Christensen, who was born and raised in Connecticut, uses the Packers’ season to teach first-graders.

“We’re tracking the whole Packers season. I have their schedule, who they’re playing, for home, for away,” she said. “We’ve been keeping track of the scores, how many wins and losses we have, who scored the greater amount of points, how many greater or how many less. We’ve actually just added another component of how many games we’ve played so far and talking about how many we have left.”

Her husband nominated her for Fan of the Year for her novel teaching, but she didn’t expect anything to come of it.

“Fast forward, around the end of October I got reached out to by the Green Bay Packers. I got on the Zoom for what I think is an interview asking some questions and they let me know I was the Green Bay Packers Fan of the Year,” Christensen said.

Christensen and her dad became Packers fans at the same time about 15 years ago, thanks to the efforts of family friend Mike Mikyska, a Wisconsin native who held Packers watch parties in his backyard pub. Her dad didn’t have a team he followed, but after spending “football Sundays” at Mikyska’s, they became fans.

“Me, my sister and Mike’s daughter joked that we were raised at the pub because we spent so much time there. We got to experience watching all the games and the sportsmanship and it was really fun,” Christensen said. “Our love for the Packers grew from there. Now we’re super-dedicated Packers fans, shareholders, all that good stuff.”

It’s not long into the season before students are engaged.

“We’ll talk about who they’re playing, if we’re home, if we’re away. We’ll talk about where the other team’s from, their mascot, some things about that,” she said. “On Monday, when we come back in, I’ll put up the scores on the board. We’ll decide which is greater or less, we’ll decide if we put up a W or an L. If they think that I’ve forgotten, they are immediately raising their hands. ‘We haven’t talked about the Packers yet.'”

Christensen has not heard if she’ll have a place at the NFL Draft in Pittsburgh in April, like Grossi and Krause did when the draft was held in Green Bay this year. Pittsburgh is a favorite city. She and her husband attended college there.

“We have a ton of friends out there, a ton of Steelers fans that are close friends,” she said.

There are fans of other teams in Connecticut, some of them the parents of Christensen’s students. They talk about that, too.

“Obviously, you have huge pockets of Giants and Patriots, those local teams, but there’s a lot of Dallas, too. Most of the time when I tell people I’m a Packers fans … it surprises people,” she said. “Like I said, I grew up going to Mike’s house every Sunday and you were just surrounded by Packers’ stuff, football, the fandom. So it really didn’t feel to weird to be a Packers fan in Connecticut.”

The worst part is being 1,000 miles from Lambeau Field. Getting to games in Green Bay is a challenge. Mostly, she goes to games when the Packers are closer to her home.

The challenge was made easier this year when her father’s company gave him a trip to Lambeau, complete with a stay in one of the Packers houses near the stadium, as a retirement gift. They saw the Packers defeat the Detroit Lions in this season’s opening game.

“It was just electric. There’s nothing like being at Lambeau. There really isn’t,” Christensen said. “It’s just such a classic football stadium. My husband, who is a Patriots fan, couldn’t get over how cool Lambeau is, and how much an atmosphere and vibe there is around it, especially on game day.”

As one of 32 hopefuls for NFL Fan of the Year, Christensen will be in San Francisco for Super Bowl LX on the NFL’s dime.

“Oh, my goodness, such a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I’m so excited to go there,” she said. “My kids, when I told them I got picked as Fan of the Year and they were sending me to the Super Bowl, they were like ‘do we get to go, too?'”

“When I tell everybody, especially people who are in the football world, that I’m the Packers Fan of the Year nominee, they are like ‘oh, cool.’ I tell them they are sending me to the Super Bowl, it’s like the jaw-dropping moment. It’s totally surreal. It probably won’t feel real until I’m actually there.”

Contact Richard Ryman at [email protected]. Follow him on X at @RichRymanPG and on Instagram at @rrymanPG.

This article originally appeared on Green Bay Press-Gazette: Fan of the Year uses Packers games to teach first-grade students

Reporting by Richard Ryman, Green Bay Press-Gazette / Green Bay Press-Gazette

USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect