Kopachuck Electives Team chosen for teamwork award

The Electives Team from Kopachuck Middle School was recently awarded the Mary Lee Squires Teamwork Award in recognition for its devotion to students and its dedication to fellow teachers.

The four-teacher team consisting of Alexa Shanafelt, Carol Stoltenberg, Dave Miyake and Steve Gernon received the award at the May 12 school board meeting.

Kopachuck Principal Heidi Fedore said the award was well deserved for a group which worked beyond its requirements in order to help students.

“The reason they were nominated is because this really was above and beyond what they were supposed to do,” Fedore said. “It’s like they took one for the team. They really believe in helping the kids and really believe in being part of a whole-building movement.”

According to Fedore, the Electives Team worked together to find a way to help students meet common core goals, working to fit the objective of “speaking and listening” into its classroom lessons.

“Our electives saw speaking and listening as an opportunity to teach kids,” she said. “The beauty of that is it kind of tied into the Smarter Balance(d Assessment Consortium).”

These objectives include things like students working with diverse partners, expanding on other students’ ideas, participating in a group and expressing their own ideas.

Fedore said fitting this objective into the elective classes — which includes multimedia, PE and art — was unusual and difficult, but the teachers were dedicated because they knew it would help their students to have more exposure to these goals.

“These are exceptional individuals. All of them are extremely student-centered,” she said. “They’re super deserving of this. I think the fact that they initiated it is really exceptional.”

The Mary Lee Squires Award is a district teamwork award that is awarded based on peer recommendations.

This story was originally published May 19, 2016 at 10:40 AM with the headline "Kopachuck Electives Team chosen for teamwork award."