Peitzman honored for teaching excellence
EAST ROCKHILL >> Pennridge teacher Matt Peitzman has never been to the International Technology and Engineering Educator’s Association annual conference.
“It rotates throughout the country,” he said. “A couple years ago, it was in Baltimore, but it was bad timing for me to miss school here.”
Peitzman will be part of the ITEEA’s 83rd annual conference, which runs from March 22 through 27, but this year’s conference will be held virtually, so Peitzman won’t be taking the day off March 26 when he’s presented with a Teacher Excellence Award.
“It’s during the school day, so it’s kind of nice that I’ll have a class and I can watch it with my students here and experience that,” he said. “I think that’ll be neat.”
“Sponsored by ITEEA and Goodheart-Willcox, the Teacher Excellence Award is one of the highest honors given to technology and engineering education classroom teachers and is presented in recognition of their outstanding contributions to the profession and their students. The Teacher Excellence Award provides public recognition at the local/state through international levels,” ITEEA said in a release naming Peitzman as one of the 20 teachers receiving the award this year. “The Teacher Excellence Awards program was established to identify outstanding technology and engineering teachers who will serve as models for their colleagues and who could form a leadership core to affect change in the field.”
“The award winners exhibit so many high-quality programs and activities occurring globally in technology and engineering education! It is inspiring to learn from these leaders, and we should all feel proud to be connected with these colleagues,” ITEEA President Dr. Philip Reed said in the release.
Peitzman, who is a Pennridge graduate and in his ninth year as a Pennridge teacher, teaches technology education and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math). He teaches Electric Guitar Building, Woodworking 1, Intro to Tech DE (Design Engineering), and Intro to Tech MP (Material Processes). He is also the Pennridge Guitar Building Club advisor.
He said he doesn’t know all the details of the awards ceremony, but thinks it will include a video he pre-recorded that will be used as an acceptance speech of sorts.
“Part of the application process was you had to write a statement about what STEM means to you as a teacher,” Peitzman said. He read that statement in the pre-recorded video, he said.
On March 25, he will be part of a 50-minute long presentation at the conference by a STEM Guitar organization, he said.
“We’re doing a presentation how we took a handson curriculum like building a guitar and we turned it into a virtual workshop during the lockdown,” Peitzman said.
“Being able to work with those folks and do that over the summer really helped me when we came back this previous fall to be able to help students who aren’t here in person,” he said. “I found that very valuable.”
The theme for this year’s ITEEA conference is “Where technology and engineering education come to life.”
“The 2021 conference focuses on the way educators make technology and engineering education relevant for all. Educators use active learning, authentic assessments, collaboration, and put research into practice in order to help technology and engineering come to life!” according to conference information on the ITEEA website.