GRAND FORKS – An English language arts teacher at Community High School has received a 2024 Voya Financial grant for an innovative teaching project designed to help prepare students for life after high school.
Sara Tezel received the $2,000 Voya Unsung Heroes grant for her efforts to turn creative teaching ideas into reality, according to an announcement from Voya Financial.
Tezel, one of 50 winners, was selected from applicants from across the country. The only winner in North Dakota in the company’s Unsung Heroes awards competition, she will now go on to compete with other finalists for one of the top three prizes – an additional $5,000 for third place, $10,000 for second place, or $25,000 for first place – from Voya Financial.
Receiving the grant is “obviously a very exciting opportunity,” Tezel said.
“Any time you have ideas for improving classroom instruction and therefore improving the lives and education of your students, it’s obvious something to celebrate. And so it’s nice to be able to get some extra funds to make more creativity happen than would maybe be possible otherwise,” she said.
Her project, “English in the Real World,” is focused on enabling students to explore careers and opportunities in the community. Students may focus on college, a career or “life-ready fields.”
Developing the idea for her grant proposal, she said, “A lot of it stems from a push to recognize that not all students are going to the same place after high school. (Years ago), it was all about college. … if you didn’t go to college, it kind of led you to believe that you weren’t going to be successful in life.
“And now we’re seeing such a huge push for the trades, especially as those industries are dying and we’re realizing how important they are for society, and recognizing the skills that come with those. What are some ways that we can reintroduce students to these fields that are hands-on, that connect with what their passions are.
“So many of my students are hands-on learners, and so when we think of what are your opportunities, what are you going to do after high school, so many of them want to go right into the workforce,” she said. “It’s like, yeah, you can do that, there are apprenticeships, but there are also two-year programs that connect to that. …
“(It’s a matter of) you don’t know what you don’t know, so giving students an opportunity to get out and explore while they’re forced to in the safe confines of high school and given time to do it and an importance to it that they maybe wouldn’t be able to do on their own.”
After narrowing their scope, students will conduct interviews and film and create videos about jobs, apprenticeships and trade schools that they might have overlooked in the past. They will use the skills they’ve learned in English class and have their interviewee share how English Language Arts affects their job.
Students will record these interactions and then produce videos that can be shared with local schools or students who may be interested in learning more about a particular field or job. This project leads students to take initiative, collaborate, edit and produce an artifact that they’re proud to share with others.
Tezel, who started teaching at Community High School in the fall of 2022, said her project is aimed at helping her students become more confident communicators. Student isolation during several years of the pandemic sharply curtailed their development of communication skills, she said.
During those years, there was “a huge drop in that skill,” she said. “That’s something that, in general, society is kind of struggling with. … As we see students going through the education system, they have such a harder time communicating than students in past decades.”
Her project is also intended to broaden their awareness of employment opportunities.
Even if students find out that it’s a field they’re not interested in, “they’re still having to talk to people they don’t know, come up with questions and develop a rapport in a short period of time,” Tezel said. “And so hopefully those are skills that are going to transcribe to life and it’s going to be like, OK, I can have a conversation with someone that I don’t necessarily know … I can make these connections. …
“The ultimate goal is that they’re able to explore and discover new things that excite them that maybe they wouldn’t have otherwise.”
Tezel is planning to use the grant funds primarily for equipment, such as a 360-degree camera, and “turning (the product) into a VR (virtual reality) experience – we have VR goggles – so in a sense they’ll be teaching future students,” she said.
This marks the second time Tezel has won a Voya Unsung Heroes. She received the grant three years ago, as a teacher at Northwood (ND) Public School. Her grant funded a project that gave high school students hands-on experience in teaching younger kids to determine if teaching might be a career they’d want to pursue.
Supporting innovation in teaching
For 28 years, the Voya Unsung Heroes program has awarded grants to K-12 educators in the United States to recognize and support their innovative teaching methods, creative educational projects, and their ability to positively influence the children they teach.
Since the program began, Voya has awarded more than $6 million in support of these educational programs nationwide.
“Many of us have fond memories of the teachers, staff and administrators who encouraged, supported and inspired us,” said Angela Harrell, Voya’s chief diversity and corporate responsibility officer and Voya Foundation president. “These individuals are the ‘best of the best’ and have made a meaningful difference in countless lives across our nation.
“For nearly 30 years, Voya’s Unsung Heroes has celebrated and financially supported the development of innovative thinking and creative teaching methods that help prepare students academically and personally. These educators are truly our unsung heroes.”
Unsung Heroes is part of the Voya Foundation’s signature program, “Voya Teacher Voices,” that focuses on empowering teachers to become leaders by promoting the teaching career, recognizing high-achieving educators, providing training opportunities, and offering financial support to achieve their goals.
To apply for the 2025 Voya Unsung Heroes grant or learn more about this year’s winning projects, as well as those from previous years, visit the Unsung Heroes website,
www.VoyaFoundation.com
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Voya Financial, Inc., is a health, wealth and investment company with about 9,000 employees. Its mission is to improve the quality of life in communities where Voya Financial operates and its employees and customers reside.