Six middle-school teachers are celebrating successes.
Laura Stamp, eighth-grade science teacher at Brooks Middle School, won a prestigious Fulbright Teacher Exchange award to Vietnam.
Stamp, who plans to conduct research on climate change education, is one of 20 educators from the United States selected for the 2023-24 award cycle. She is a National Board Certified teacher with nearly 25 years of experience. She teaches a climate change class at Brooks.
Under the Fulbright, K-12 educators from the United States conduct research and engage in professional learning experiences abroad for three to six months. Stamp will be doing her research from January to March of 2024. She plans to visit rural and urban schools with a goal to develop a project with a school in which her eighth-graders will be able to interact with students in Vietnam.
Stamps is also a member of the Oak Park Climate Action Network where she contributed to the long-range sustainability plan adopted by the village.
At Brooks and Julian middle schools, five teachers were selected as one of 20 teams from across the country to participate in the national Teach to Lead Summit this month. They were the only teachers in Illinois to be selected for the summit.
Assistant Superintendent of Middle Schools Dr. Luis Fernando De León, Brooks Principal April Capuder, Julian Interim Principal William Lee, Julian Student Success Coach Kasey Fleming, and Brooks Student Success Coach Nichelle Stigger were selected for the cohort.
Hosted by the U.S. Department of Education, the summit is intended to spotlight and advance groundbreaking, teacher-led work.
Teach to Lead aims to create a national culture in which teachers are valued as the foremost experts in instruction and are leaders of informing, developing, and implementing education policy and practice.