NEA Foundation Award for Teaching Excellence
Through the Digital Arts Alliance, the NEA Foundation has established and continues to create a range of programs to support its Closing the Achievement Gaps Initiative and to celebrate the nation’s best teachers through the Award for Teaching Excellence program.
The NEA Foundation supports digital arts as a complementary strategy for the Closing the Achievement Gaps Initiative, a multi-year investment in school quality and leadership. Digital arts enhance the way that teachers and young people in these key districts experience and acquire 21st-century skills. In partnership, the NEA Foundation and the Pearson Foundation determine specific digital arts implementation plans for each selected Achievement Gap site.
The resulting programs include a range of professional development opportunities, classroom experiences, and technological capacity grants supported by Digital Arts Alliance partners including the Pearson Foundation, the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), and Peachpit. From community outreach at after-school programs in Chattanooga, Tennessee, to a multi-year Digital Arts Alliance Leadership Institute conducted in Chesapeake, Ohio, and throughout the Appalachian region, districts involved in the NEA Foundation digital arts programs enjoy increased community engagement and enhanced professional communities of teaching practice, all of which benefit school-year, after-school, and summer programming.
The Award for Teaching Excellence program celebrates the best NEA Member Teachers. This year, the Pearson Foundation is working directly with the students of teachers nominated for this prestigious award to tell each teacher’s story in digital format, from the students’ point of view. Working directly with digital arts allows students to actively and thoughtfully put to use the same 21st-century learning skills that they casually engage during their everyday lives. The final films premiere at the NEA Gala in Washington, DC.
In 2009, the NEA Foundation and the Pearson Foundation celebrated the following teachers through the Digital Arts Alliance:
Joseph Fatheree, a multi-media and web design teacher at Effingham High School in Effingham, Illinois, and the ultimate winner of the Member Benefits Award for Teaching Excellence
Michael Flynn, a teacher at William E. Norris Elementary School in Southampton, Massachusetts
Richard T. Ognibene, Jr., a chemistry and physics teacher at Fairport High School in Fairport, New York
Stephanie Rossi, teacher at Wheat Ridge Senior High School in Wheat Ridge, Colorado
Marlene Srock, a first grade teacher at Bel Air Elementary School in Minot, North Dakota
