Muscogee County teacher wins national LifeChanger of the Year award
Teachers are considered life changers. And nobody does that better than one Muscogee County School District educator, according to a national award program.
Eric Crouch, a fifth-grade teacher at Double Churches Elementary School, is the grand prize winner of the 2019-20 LifeChanger of the Year award.
Officials surprised Crouch with the announcement Friday.
The $10,000 prize will be split, $5,000 each for the teacher and the school.
More than 850 teachers, administrators and other employees in school systems from all 50 states and the District of Columbia were nominated.
LifeChanger of the Year is sponsored by National Life Group, an insurance company headquartered in Vermont. Since 2013, the program annually recognizes school system employees who help students by exemplifying excellence, positive influence and leadership.
According to the selection criteria, the winner is someone who:
- Benefits the students.
- Improves the school.
- Leads school or district activities.
- Performs with excellence at the professional level.
- Shows commitment to producing a nurturing atmosphere.
This year’s selection committee was comprised of six educators who have previously won the grand prize or were finalists.
During a schoolwide assembly in February, Crouch was surprised with the announcement that he was among the five finalists. Friday, officials staged another surprise.
This time, while teachers were in training for the school year to start Aug. 17, Crouch was asked to drive a former faculty member, Nichole Baugh, to the school. When he returned, a social-distanced celebration was waiting for him in the parking lot.
Double Churches principal Paula Shaw-Powell, who nominated Crouch, told him somebody called her phone and wants to speak with him. It was Mallorie Manosh, the LifeChanger program manager, from Montpelier, Vermont.
“You, my friend, are the LifeChanger of the Year grand prize winner,” she told him.
As the 1980 Kool & The Gang song “Celebration” blared from a loudspeaker, Double Churches staff members cheered — and switched their signs honoring Baugh to those honoring Crouch after the surprise announcement.
Powell thanked Crouch for not only changing the lives of children but also, “You make children know that they can change the lives of people around the world.”
Crouch told his colleagues, “This is not something that anybody does by themselves. … Every person in this building does something for children that matters today for tomorrow.”
MCSD superintendent David Lewis told Crouch, “You are certainly well-deserving of this. You personify the ideals of not only the LifeChanger award but what teachers do every day. As you mentioned, we have lots of life changers right here, all throughout our district, and we thank them all for their work. But we thank you for representing us so well.”
After the celebration, Crouch credited the teachers who educate his fifth-graders each year before they enter his classroom.
“They couldn’t do the work that I do with them if it wasn’t for somebody doing the work below,” he said. “… When they get off the bus, every moment in the building is an important moment, and everybody who touches that kid’s life makes a difference.”
Crouch is familiar to Ledger-Enquirer readers for various examples of educational excellence:
- In December 2014, Crouch was depicted on North America’s largest billboard in New York City’s Times Square. He was featured as part of DonorsChoose.org advertisement. The website helps teachers raise money for educational projects. In four years, it enabled Crouch’s classroom to receive items totaling at least $20,000, he said, such as 20 iPads, 20 iPods, a 3-D printer and hundreds of books.
- In March 2016, Crouch was named a semifinalist for MCSD’s Teacher of the Year award.
- In November 2016, Crouch became one of 35 Milken Educator Award winners in the United States and the only one in Georgia that year. The California-based award is considered the “Oscar of Teaching” and includes a $25,000 prize.
- In February 2017, Crouch was featured in the “Why I Teach” video, part of the “Real Teachers, Real Voices” campaign conducted by the Governor’s Office of Student Achievement.
- Also in February 2017, Crouch was among nine MCSD teachers selected as a Harvard Fellow by the Muscogee Educational Excellence Foundation, which annually pays for a group of educators to take professional development courses at Harvard University during the summer.
- In May 2017, the Kansas-based Lowell Milken Center for Unsung Heroes named him one of the six LMC Fellows that year.
- In November 2017, Crouch’s students were the local participants in the Hovercraft Project, an initiative from Chase Educational Consulting of Sarasota, Fla.
- In December 2017, Crouch’s students used a 3-D printer to make Christmas ornaments. Then they sold them to help save a school in Africa.
- In February 2018, Crouch’s students produced a video of him being super silly to promote precautions against catching the flu. The video went viral.
- In March 2018, Crouch’s students produced a video responding to the national debate about whether to arm teachers.
- In December 2018, he became one of 50 international finalists and one of four in the United States for the 2019 Global Teacher Prize.
- In January 2019, Crouch guided his students in an empathy project, producing a video that helped raise more than $700,000 for a school district in Florida devastated by a hurricane.
Crouch is a product of local schools. He graduated in 2004 from Hardaway High School. He earned his bachelor’s degree from Columbus State University and his master’s degree from Troy University, both in early childhood education. He earned a specialist’s degree in education leadership from CSU.
This story was originally published August 7, 2020 at 12:35 PM.
