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Focus on Literacy, Community Service Make NKU Grad 2012 Outstanding Teacher

The students in Lisa Lokesak’s third grade class at New Haven Elementary learn more than just reading, writing and arithmetic. They graduate to the fourth grade as community servants and fundraisers, poets and event organizers, budding environmentalists and engaged citizens.

As a result, the Kentucky Teacher of the Year Finalist and Toyota Reading Teacher of the Year runner-up is adding 2012 Northern Kentucky Outstanding Teacher Award to her list of accomplishments. Northern Kentucky University, the Cincinnatus Association, the University of Cincinnati and Xavier University will award the C3 Outstanding Teacher Awards Feb. 7 at NKU to honor educators in the region who make an extraordinary impact on their students’ lives.

The Northern Kentucky University graduate began her career after her last child was in elementary school. She returned to college in 1998 and earned her bachelor’s degree in elementary education in 2002 and her master’s in 2007. When she began student teaching, she was surprised to learn that many students could not read.

When she joined New Haven Elementary, Lokesak began securing donations from local corporations and Scholastic Books to create the Book Blazer. She drove around lower income areas and distributed books to children and families.

Then, she began hosting Family Literacy Nights at the school with a grant from Cummins Eastern Distribution Center in Walton, Ky. District and Cummins staff served families a hot meal and teachers provided parents information about how they could help their children at home, while the students received literacy intervention. Test scores and parental involvement went up, and the literacy nights began to focus on mathematics, too.

“She knows how to take students to higher cognitive levels of learning regardless of their academic performance level,” said New Haven Principal Nancy Duley in her recommendation letter.

In her classroom, she began Classroom Coffeehouse Poetry Readings to showcase student poetry and an annual classroom play. The students plan the events, send out invitations and create props and costumes.

“These events create a level of comfort and familiarity with the classroom and me,” Lokesak wrote in her award application essay. “This comfort level carries over to the more formal conference setting and sets a tone for positive interaction between school and home. Student benefit from having the parents involved because the parents are aware of what the students are learning as well as classroom and homework expectations.”

With another Cummins grant, she created a community garden and outdoor classroom at school to teach her children about environmental education. She implemented a daily newspaper reading program in class, and when a local museum’s air conditioning units were stolen, she and her class set out to raise money to replace the units. They collected money and shoes for people in Niger and helped Big Bone State Park acquire National Historic Landmark status. The students also raised money for a plaque with the new park name and encouraged a parent who owned a nursery to donate a tree.

These projects, which were student-led, taught students empathy, how to help others and cultural awareness, Lokesak said.

“The impact on my students was overwhelming,” Lokesak wrote. “In (my students’) reflective paragraphs, without exception, the students all remarked that this experience had shown them that it does not matter how old you are, every person can make a difference.”

Dr. Lynne A. Smith, a NKU professor who mentored Lokesak, said Lokesak’s many honors speak for the quality of her teaching. She goes beyond the classroom to meet the needs of her students and their families.

“I currently work with a teacher whose children had Lisa for a teacher; as a relatively new teacher, this mother cannot say enough about the experiences her children had in Lisa’s room and often speaks of Lisa as being the ideal teacher she would like to become,” Smith wrote in her recommendation letter.

Though her classroom activities keep her busy, Lokesak continues to improve herself. She attends many professional development classes and asked a local dyslexia expert if she could shadow her for a day.

“For me, the most important thing I can do to provide my students with a rich, innovative, fun and caring environment is to continue to grow as a learner myself,” Lokesak wrote. “I seek out the best mentors, align myself with the most enthusiastic colleagues and constantly search for effective methods of presenting information.”

 

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Kentucky Teacher of the Year

For two local teachers, it did not take the Kentucky Department of Education and Ashland Inc. to recognize their performance to know they are making a difference. They are rewarded every day with sweet notes and fist bumps from their students.

Northern Kentucky University alumna Kimberly Shearer, a Boone County High School English teacher, received the 2012 Kentucky Teacher of the Year Award on Oct. 18 for her work as her school’s writing coord

inator and her professional affiliations. She coordinated an ACT Summit and national conference for the National Council of Teachers of English. 

She earned a master’s in education degree from NKU in 2007.

“I returned to school with a decorated room, and many sweet cards and messages,” Shearer said. “All the excitement has been a lot of fun, but to be honest, I think those notes from my kids were the most meaningful part of this experience for me. “

She received $10,000, a commemorative crystal bowl and a sabbatical or the equivalent from KDE and Ashland so she can represent the state in the 2012 National Teacher of the Year competition.

Jennifer Fowler, who teaches language arts at Paintsville Independent Junior/Senior High School and received her Gifted Education Endorsement at NKU, was one of 21 teachers to win a Teacher Achievement Award. She also was one of three finalists for the Middle School Teacher of the Year Award.

“When my students heard that I was a semifinalist, they were my biggest cheerleaders,” Fowler said. “I can honestly say that their kind, sincere comments are worth more than any title.  My favorite parts of this process include my students' daily question, ‘Have you won Teacher of the Year yet?’ (they had such confidence in me) and the fist-bumps I received as they walked out of my class the day we were being observed. “

To read more about the awards and recipients, visit http://www.ashland.com/commitments/community-involvement/ktoy. For the official KDU release, visit http://www.education.ky.gov/KDE/HomePageRepository/News%20Room/Current%20Press%20Releases%20and%20Advisories/11-088.htm.

To read Kimberly Shearer’s reaction to her award and her thoughts about NKU’s influence on her teaching career, click here.

For Jennifer Fowler’s take on the award process and her NKU education, click here.

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NKU Graduate’s Literacy Programs Have Been A Boon for Boone County

Something was nagging at Lisa Lokesak throughout her adult life. She knew she was born to teach, but life kept getting in the way. When her last child was in third grade, she headed to Northern Kentucky University to fulfill her dream.

“Now they will have to take me out of (my classroom) feet first,” said the third grade New Haven Elementary teacher. “I will probably die on the job.”

The Boone County resident recently was named runner-up for a national award sponsored by Toyota and the Louisville-based National Center for Family Literacy. She represented Kentucky at a recent conference and received praise for her devotion to literacy. She also received a $500 grant.

Lytle Thomas, president and chief executive officer of Heritage Bank, nominated Lokesak for the award after seeing how involved she was with her class.

“She is clearly making an impact in the lives of her kids,” Thomas said. “She is one of the unsung heroes. She goes above and beyond to educate kids and is very deserving of the award. She genuinely cares about her students and makes sacrifices to help them achieve.”

Before becoming a teacher, Lokesak took literacy for granted. Having taught her own children to read from a young age, she assumed all students could read. In her first year at New Haven, she had two third-graders who could not read above a kindergarten level.

Lokesak knew she had to take action, so she created a Reading Club before school where she helped students improve their skills. But that was not enough.

Many of her clubbers came from low socioeconomic families who had lost their public library privileges for damaging books or failing to pay fines.

So she created the Book Blazer, a traveling library out of her Chevrolet Blazer. With the help of her colleagues, Lokesak outfitted the Blazer with shelves and stocked them with books she acquired from Scholastic’s Book Fair using $1,500 she raised from the school PTA and Sam’s Club.

“I went to Scholastic and said, ‘I will give you $1,500, but I want you to give me $3,000 worth of books,’” Lokesak said. “I thought they would laugh me out of the room, but they didn’t.”

For six years, she drove into underserved areas with a high concentration of New Haven students and would lay on the horn.

“They would run out like little ants, coming up over the hills,” Lokesak said. “It was amazing.”

During her Blazer runs, Lokesak saw parents’ hesitation to approach the vehicle, so she began offering educational books and magazines for adults. Many parents told her they also had literacy issues.

Thus began the Family Literacy Nights. Five times a year, families could come to New Haven Elementary for a home cooked meal, served on tablecloths by teachers and volunteers. They would have an opportunity to relax, talk with their children and break into groups with the teachers.

While the students played reading games, the parents learned how to navigate the school and district’s websites and how to access their children’s accounts.

Involving the parents is crucial, said Dr. Lynne A. Smith, who teaches courses in the Reading/Writing Endorsement and the Kentucky Reading Project at NKU. Studies show that incoming kindergarteners have widely differing reading abilities, and the gap widens as children age. The literacy discrepancy can be attributed to parental involvement.

“(Family literacy) is a growing concern everywhere, but Lisa epitomizes what can be done to help bridge the gap between the students who have strong support at home and those who need more help,” Smith said.

In order to pay for the program, Lokesak secured a $25,000 grant from Cummins Eastern Distribution Center in Walton, Ky. The grant provided funding for the program’s food, books and materials and books for the Book Blazer. Families that requested one could receive a taxi voucher for a free trip to the Boone County Public Library. Volunteers from Cummins, which is the local representative of the global manufacturer of fuel and filtration systems, also served dinner so they could see their gift’s impact.

“Without Cummins, we never could have done what we did,” Lokesak said. “We may have been able to do something on a small scale, but never something this large. Cummins was taking a gamble with us, but in the end, I think it paid off.”

Rena Gibbs, community involvement leader for Cummins, approved the initial $25,000 gift for the literacy program and a second $25,000 proposal by Lokesak for a summer school program, in which New Haven students created a community garden and outdoor classroom that they use to compost, learn about biology and have as a peaceful place to read. They are expanding the area with fruit trees and have created a memorial garden.

New Haven teachers’ willingness to generate innovative ideas that will impact their community is appealing to Cummins, Gibbs said. She knows they are seeking donations elsewhere and wisely spending the money. Plus, the programs are all sustainable.

“If they could bottle whatever they have at New Haven and send it to all the other schools, I cannot imagine what our education system would look like,” Gibbs said. “They are truly dedicated to their students. It is not just a paycheck for them.”

The main goal of the literacy nights was to engage parents in their children’s education, Lokesak said. Often parents feel intimidated by the school system or afraid they will say the wrong thing. The literacy nights give those parents allies within their schools so they feel more comfortable coming to a teacher if there is a question or concern.

As a result of the literacy nights, parental involvement has greatly increased and reading scores are no longer a concern. Now, Lokesak and her crew are introducing math and strategy games to the literacy nights to help increase the school’s math scores while still stressing literacy.

“I don’t think anyone else is as over the moon about literacy as I am, but I do what I do because I love my kids and I would do anything for them,” Lokesak said. “Sometimes it can be overwhelming, but I am proud of what we have done, and I hope that we can continue doing it.”

Lisa Lokesak earned her bachelor’s degree in elementary education in 2002 and her master’s in education with a focus on reading and writing in 2007. She credits Dr. Lynne A. Smith with making her experience as a nontraditional student meaningful.

“She was very understanding and extremely helpful,” Lokesak said. “She guided me through the program without sacrificing any quality, but knew that I was coming at it differently – with a husband, children and aging parents.”

She lives in Boone County with her husband, Jim, and they have four children, Ashley Lokesak Davis (Matt), Brian (Mary Beth) Lokesak, Christopher (Kristen) Lokesak and Daniel Lokesak and six grandchildren. Brian attends NKU.
For more information about Lokesak, visit http://cincinnati.com/blogs/thebooneblog/2011/04/13/new-haven-has-runner-up-for-teacher-of-year/.

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Award Winning Alumna - Recipient of the 2011 Education Award

If she counts it up, Susan Davies has spent most of her 24-year career teaching special education, a path she pursued because she enjoyed working with her handicapped cousin.

She has worked in various capacities, different grade levels and numerous schools, and the variety is what kept the spark alive, said Davies, who received the C3 Northern Kentucky Outstanding Teacher Award from Northern Kentucky University, the Cincinnatus Association, the University of Cincinnati and Xavier University.

“Changing jobs caused me to relearn and look for new ways of teaching,” said the 1992 NKU master’s of education graduate.

Surrounded by her husband, three children, NKU College of Education and Human Services Dean Mark Wasicsko and Associate Dean Carol Ryan, Boone County Schools Superintendent Randy Poe and North Pointe Elementary Principal Jo Craven, Davies accepted the award, which she said was a surprise and an honor, on Feb. 8 at the C3-Cincinnatus Recognition of Excellence in Education banquet.

"It was a special privilege for me to be able to present the award to Susan Davies, a teacher who works with students with reading challenges,” Wasicsko said. “I didn't learn to read until I was in the sixth grade and, because of a dedicated teacher like Susan, whole worlds I couldn't imagine opened for me. I know that my life and career as a teacher educator and college dean could never have happened except for that dedicated teacher. Susan Davies is providing students with a foundation that, I hope and expect, will lead to a great and more abundant future for them and their families."

 In her latest role, Davies helped pilot the Response to Intervention program at North Pointe Elementary. The program identifies students who need assistance with their reading, math and writing skills. It also strengthens classroom teaching, uses diagnostic assessments for all students to identify those with potential difficulties and provides early interventions. Davies worked with the program when she taught in a high poverty school in inner city Cincinnati and helped implement it in Boone County.

“(RTI) has impacted a large population of students,” Davies said. “If you are not a Title I school, your students may not receive this type of intervention right away. This has opened doors to a lot of kids and lets students who will be evaluated for special education to receive services earlier.”

Davies’ exhaustive work with RTI at North Pointe made her a candidate for the C3 award. Craven nominated Davies because of her efforts to improve students’ learning opportunities. Under Davies’ guidance, more North Pointe students now read at grade level.

Sara Eisenhardt, assistant professor in teacher education, represents Northern Kentucky University on the C3 Committee, which is an organization founded by the presidents of Northern Kentucky University, the University of Cincinnati and Xavier University to address issues facing the region. Each year the organization solicits nominations from principals in the northern Kentucky and Greater Cincinnati area and honors one elementary, middle and high school teacher. Each nominee has to submit an essay about his or her work and achievements, which is reviewed by the C3 Committee.

“Susan, by far, stood out as the best of the best,” Eisenhardt said. “She is the kind of teacher that everyone would love to have. She is very knowledgeable, skillful and demonstrates outstanding professional dispositions in all of her work.”

Davies holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Kentucky and a master’s from Northern Kentucky University. She also immersed herself in the rigorous assessments of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards and is a National Board Certified teacher, the highest level of achievement a teacher can attain.

She gained valuable skills in her NKU master’s courses that helped her as a middle school language arts teacher. At that time she was grading writing portfolios and her time working on the Writing Project strengthened her skills and guided her instruction.

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