Krakowiak getting innovator award

Patrycja Krakowiak, a life sciences instructor at the Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences and the Arts, is one of 10 national recipients of The Henry Ford’s Innovation Nation Teacher Innovator Awards.

The Henry Ford’s Teacher Innovator Awards, co-sponsored by Raytheon Technologies, honors pre-kindergarten through 12th-grade teachers who inspire their students to challenge the rules and take risks, who demonstrate how to be collaborative and empathetic, and teach the value of learning from staying curious and learning from failure.

In place of the five-day trip to The Henry Ford Museum, the organization is awarding each grand prize winner a $2,000 honorarium for educational supplies.

Her application for the national award included videos of students speaking about their classroom experiences and other testimonials about her classroom innovation.

Krakowiak teaches an advanced biology course in the Hot Springs school’s Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics Pathways digital learning program. The course helps guide educators across Arkansas in preparing students to take the Advanced Placement Biology course and test.

She said she will use the honorarium to purchase items for her classroom. Forty Arkansas teachers have enrolled to participate in the STEM Pathways program in the 2020-21 academic year. That translates into about 600 students around the state who will receive instruction from Krakowiak and her teaching colleague in addition to the residential program students. It motivates her to continue to improve her teaching skills, she said.