SOMERSET, Ky. (LEX 18) — An elementary school teacher in Pulaski County received an award from a national STEM education program. On Tuesday, the director of the program, called Project Lead the Way, paid a special visit to science teacher Natasha Craft.
Mrs. Craft, the STEM Lab teacher at Pulaski Elementary School, was presented with the Robert and Patricia Kern National Teacher of the Year Award. From her classroom to the hallways, the whole school got to celebrate the honor Mrs. Craft received.
"It is amazing, kind of unbelievable. I couldn't believe it when they told me," says Craft, "I'm very honored to receive that award."
Project Lead the Way is a national STEM curriculum program for schools, which Mrs. Craft worked to launch at Pulaski Elementary, and Principal Angela Adkins says Mrs. Craft has been instrumental in the growth of the program.
"She was really intrigued by this, and she was trained, and implemented this into our school," says Adkins.
The program helps teach students skills in STEM education that will go far beyond the classroom.
"It's about the skills; the problem-solving skills, the teamwork skills, and design--the whole design process that our students have had the opportunity to learn," says Adkins.
"They're learning how to fail forward," says Craft, "They're learning how, when things do not work out right, to recover from that and come up with a new idea; how to work as a team; how to communicate. Everything they do, they have to be able to get up in front of the class and explain what they did and why."
"And we're having fun at the same time," she adds, "We're driving robots, and flying drones, and building, and being engineers."
For this newly-named national teacher of the year, those lessons are bigger than any award.
Mrs. Craft is also a national trainer for the Project Lead the Way STEM program, and Pulaski Elementary School has been named a distinguished school for the program.
