Instructor receives innovator award
Patrycja Krakowiak-Valdivia, 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.
Krakowiak-Valdivia told The Sentinel-Record on Wednesday that the award is in recognition of all her years of hard work and pushing forward as a teacher.
“It’s easy to become complacent, not push yourself, not go beyond, and not change things too much. I have never been able to kind of sit still. I’ve always been pushing forward and changing things to match what the students need, how they’re changing, how the world is changing, and how our research is changing about education,”
Krakowiak-Valdivia said.
“It is an amazing feeling that others feel the same way as I do, that it is worth it to invest in our students by changing and innovating our curriculum, our approach or pedagogy to the students,” she said.
Krakowiak-Valdivia said the application for the award included a description of innovations in her classrooms, and students had to record their opinions, their testimonials of what they felt her teaching was like and what they thought was innovative about it.
“They had judges that read through all the applications, and they picked 10 grand prize winners from around the country,” she said.
Krakowiak-Valdivia said she thinks the biggest reason why she was selected was she put a lot of passion and innovation into her teaching, noting she tries a lot of things out, has a Ph.D. in human genetics, a bachelor’s in chemistry and is a research scientist at heart.
“I research the methods and try them out with students and teachers and see what works best. Before I sort of disseminate it and use it,” she said.
“If a method and teaching method doesn’t work out, scrap it and try another one. So, in that way, it’s a very creative process. It’s a very sort of research-driven process, a data-driven process,” Krakowiak-Valdivia said.
She said she found out she got the award through an email from the awards committee. Then the national recipients had a Zoom meeting with the awards committee to let them know the regular grand prize was not going to be possible due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In previous years, the grand prize for the national recipients was a trip to Detroit to the Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation to learn about innovations in education, and they got to stay there for a week, Krakowiak-Valdivia said.
“They decided to give us an honorarium of $1,500, where we can spend this money on further innovating our classrooms. I’m thinking of getting some more models of DNA and hands-on virtual reality equipment and maybe even some supplies for the laboratory so that I can do more in-depth lab experiments,” she said.
Krakowiak-Valdivia said she feels she inspires her students to be the very best they can be.
“I love my job. I wake up every morning and it’s not I have to go to work, (it’s) I get to influence these young minds and their such idealists and they’re so full of excitement and ambition. It’s great.
It’s a wonderful privilege and opportunity,” she said.
“I absolutely want to thank both ASMSA and the Henry Ford (awards committee) for giving me an opportunity to improve education to give students an opportunity to go beyond themselves,” Krakowiak-Valdivia said.
“I want to thank my family because they have to put up with me, being so busy and doing so much work. I’ve got a husband and three daughters. So, they’re all really a big part of this, because they’re so understanding and helpful,” she said.
“Dr. Whitney Holden, (Life Sciences Specialist), who has been my colleague and co-director of various programs, we even co-taught the class together that does independent research. So she’s definitely critical in all of this,” she said.