As 2023 winds to a close, we wanted to highlight some of the inspiring educators we’ve worked with and learned from this past year.
These incredible educators are helping students grow and learn, working with them hand-in-hand to enact real change and overcome barriers in their communities. Check out the remarkable list of five educators below.
Cammy Neth – Scholastic SuperSTEM Advisory Team
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Cammy is a fifth grade teacher from Kansas City, Missouri on a mission to share STEM resources with her students and introduce them to careers in STEM-related industries. This year, Cammy partnered with Scholastic Magazines+ to pilot SuperSTEM – a new print and digital resource created to meet the urgent need in classrooms for integrated materials that strengthen science, technology, engineering and math skills – in her classroom.
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Now in her 22nd year of teaching, Cammy has seen the educational world evolve as she’s worked diligently to prepare students for middle school. Ultimately, her goal is to have her students be able to have real-life opportunities to solve problems and be inspired to follow in the footsteps of other people they read about in Scholastic Magazines+ resources like SuperSTEM.
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Hear more about Cammy’s STEM success story in this broadcast segment from Good Day Kansas City.
Tierra Pitchford – 2022-2023 Scholastic Teacher Fellow
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Tierra Pitchford is a first grade teacher from Round Rock, TX, who was selected as one of just twelve members of Scholastic’s inaugural Teacher Fellows Cohort. The Teacher Fellows worked with Scholastic Education Solutions’ product development, research and publishing teams. Each Teacher Fellow completed a capstone project that was showcased at Scholastic’s headquarters over the summer.
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For her capstone project, Tierra worked with other educators to assist in professional title research and worked to improve various K-12 initiatives.
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Read more about Tierra’s work for the Scholastic Teacher Fellows program in this article by KXAN (NBC).
Jen Hunter and Jenna Alesiani – Classrooms Count™
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Jen and Jenna are two educators from Delran, New Jersey, who have used the Scholastic ClassroomsCount™ crowdfunding platform over the years to purchase books for their fifth grade classroom library.
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Each year, Jen and Jenna raise enough money for each of their students to receive nine free books each year – allowing each student in their classroom to start building their very own home libraries. The pair is committed to helping students understand the power of literacy, and encouraging them to read as often as they can.
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Read more about Jen and Jenna’s story which was covered by The Sun Newspapers.
Lisa Parenteau – Project Blueberry
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Lisa is a 4th grade teacher in Madison, Mississippi, who was inspired by a Scholastic News article her class read that detailed the story of how a Kansas classroom lobbied legislators for the Sandhill plum to be named their state fruit.
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Lisa seized a unique teaching opportunity after one of her students inquired if Mississippi also had a state fruit, and worked with her class to conduct research on the state’s most popular fruits. Eventually, their thorough research cultivated in sending state legislators letters to make the case for the humble blueberry.
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Lisa’s classrooms’ efforts were especially fruitful in February 2023, when her fourth graders ushered a bill into law naming the blueberry Mississippi’s official state fruit.
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Learn more about this incredible story as covered by K-12 Dive.
