Warren Co. teacher honored as Financial Literacy Teacher of the Year
Stephanie Mills, a financial literacy teacher at South Warren High School (Warren County), was named the 2018 Financial Literacy Teacher of the Year by the Kentucky Jumpstart Coalition for Personal Financial Literacy.
Mills’ award includes $300 for classroom materials or training, which she has worked to increase through Donors Choose. The Kentucky Jump$tart Coalition also paid for Mills to attend the Jump$tart National Educator Conference in Cleveland.
Mills incorporates a variety of teaching techniques and curriculum materials to reach students of different learning styles. She uses interactive activities, guest speakers, video clips and more to teach her students how to apply the skills they learn in real life.
Mills is also helping the Kentucky Department of Education develop standards for the new financial literacy requirement that begins with freshmen entering high school in the 2020-21 school year.
Prichard’s Student Voice team to share $100,000 award
The Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence’s Student Voice Team and the Iowa Department of Education will share a $100,000 Innovation Award from Pathway 2 Tomorrow (P2T).
The teams won for their proposals addressing the authentic engagement of students as partners in education policymaking. Led by former New Mexico Secretary of Education Hanna Skandera, P2T is a non-profit designed to connect educators, practitioners, parents, researchers, advocates, nonprofit and business leaders and entrepreneurs with state and local policymakers.
“These two proposals provide a roadmap for building authentic student ownership in decision making and school transformation,” Skandera said. “While we have always said that students matter and that we have a desire to incorporate their perspectives, these proposals provide game-changing impact for scale.”
Prichard’s proposal focuses on the importance of involving students in education research, policy and advocacy through a Student Voice Think Tank, according to a P2T news release.
“We know from experience that as primary stakeholders in our education system, students can be far more than just consumers of it; they can be dynamic co-creators too. The P2T award further validates this idea and the hundreds of Kentucky youth who have been partnering with the Prichard Committee and testing models of what meaningful student engagement in education improvement efforts can look like over several years now,” said Rachel Belin, director of Prichard’s Student Voice Team.
The Kentucky and Iowa proposals were two of 240 ideas from 39 states. Of those, only 24 proposals were selected to receive a $15,000 award to expand on their idea and be considered for the Innovation Award.