These 7 Muscogee County teachers named 2020 Harvard Fellows. Here are the details.
Seven more Muscogee County School District teachers will have an all-expenses-paid week of professional development at Harvard University, thanks to another year of the Muscogee Educational Excellence Foundation funding this program.
MEEF announced its 2020 Harvard Fellows at a news conference Wednesday in the Wynnton Arts Academy library:
- Kunicko Byrd of Carver High School.
- Danielle Cooper of Aaron Cohn Middle School.
- Katherine Culverson of Arnold Magnet Academy.
- Shalon Gillespie of Blackmon Road Middle School.
- Amanda Hefner of Columbus High School.
- Steve Ring of Mathews Elementary School.
- Kelly Roberts of St. Elmo Center for the Gifted.
Including this year’s group, MEEF has invested more than $448,500 for 69 MCSD teachers to be Harvard Fellows since 2012.
Marquette McKnight, the foundation’s executive director, told this year’s class of Harvard Fellows their predecessors “have maximized their experience to unbelievable heights in our school system, and we expect nothing less from y’all than that.”
Besides benefiting their students with “reinvigorated” instruction, the Harvard Fellows pay it forward to their colleagues by sharing strategies and techniques through model classrooms, McKnight said.
“They are not only seen as teacher leaders, but they are seen as teaching scholars,” she said, “because they continue to hone their craft.”
The foundation selects its Harvard Fellows from candidates who were among the 10 Teacher of the Year semifinalists in previous years.
Gillespie, who teaches math at Blackmon Road, was one of the three Teacher of the Year finalists in 2019. Now, she is the captain of this year’s MCSD Harvard Fellows, serving as the link between the university and the school district.
“I am beyond excited,” she said in an interview. “I am excited to be able to learn new things, new strategies to bring in my classroom and be able to actually help other teachers as well.”
Melanie Gouine, the 2018 MCSD Teacher of the Year and one of the nine 2019 Harvard Fellows from Columbus, said that week in Cambridge, Mass., changed how she teaches. Her study group at Harvard had teachers from six countries.
“I was able to network with those teachers and actually started global connections with classrooms around the world,” she told the Ledger-Enquirer.
For example, now Gouine’s fourth-grade class at North Columbus Elementary School has periodic video conferences with a class in Australia while they learn about social-emotional issues, such as depression, bullying and anxiety. Her students also raised more than $1,100 for wildfire recovery in Australia.
“The kids just brought in money from home,” she said. “We talked about empathy and being agents of change. … We never would have done that had we not had that connection with that classroom.”
Next, she hopes to connect with classrooms in China and Kenya through teachers from those countries she met at Harvard.
MEEF is a nonprofit organization dedicated to fostering educational excellence by focusing on teachers who are innovative and exceptionally effective. In its 24-year history, the foundation has awarded more $2.6 million to such educators through the Teacher of the Year and Harvard Fellows programs and other grants.
“Everywhere I go throughout the community and certainly throughout the schools, we hear what an exceptional job MEEF does in recognizing and supporting teachers for their excellence,” MCSD superintendent David Lewis said during the news conference.
Lewis added, “That is what’s going to break the cycle of poverty in our community, getting them to understand how education really does level the playing field and gets teachers and, by extension, students excited about learning. So I could not be more excited and thrilled by what the Harvard Fellows group does as they come back and will do in the future.”
The fellows attend the Project Zero Classroom program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where tuition for this year’s July 20-24 conference is $3,635.
Gillespie expressed her gratitude for the generosity from the MEEF donors.
“What is says about Columbus is that they believe education is important and that investing in our teachers also invests in our students,” she said. “It trickles down. So, in the end, it’s the students who win.”
This story was originally published February 12, 2020 at 4:35 PM.
