Mrs. Harris receives educator award at USU game

Over the weekend, Thirkill Elementary second grade teacher Mrs. Cheryl Harris was one of four USU alumni who received a $1,000 classroom award during the weekend’s game.

“I was nominated and I didn’t know, so last week I got an email.  And you know how emails are—I thought is this really legit?  And it was.  So, they gave my family and I tickets, and we went down to Utah State.  Originally I thought there was going to be like a hundred educators out there on the field and they were just going to say ‘there you go’ and we’d be off the field.  Well, it turned out there were four of us,” she laughed.

“We got on the field and then they said, ‘we’re giving all of you a thousand dollars to use in your classroom.  From what I can tell I need to check with the school district to see if I can accept it,” Harris said.  It turned out before too much later in the day that she was approved by the district to accept the funds.  There is a clause in the contract that prevents employees from accepting any contributions more than a set amount.  Since the funds were to be used for the benefit of the students in the classroom, there was determined not to be any problem accepting it.

“I have some kids that are bigtime Utah State fans, so I will print that [a picture of herself with the USU mascot] to show them,” Harris said.  She was not aware that the they were “Striping the stadium” with blue and white, and was had been given a white shirt for her section that “looked like a nightgown!” due to its size.

 “Those who nominated teachers did have to write a paragraph explaining why, so of course I’d really like to read that!”

The funds can be used through Donors Choose, which gives her a range of options.  There are a few things that Mrs. Harris would potentially like to use the money for, including creating a reading corner inside the classroom, purchasing science items, or purchasing math manipulatives or other items to aid with classroom instruction.

Math manipulatives are physical objects that are used to help communicate concepts in mathematics.  One example was a set of nesting doll style boxes designed to help students visualize different “places” in multiple digit numbers.  Each box of ten units, for instance, can be added together to demonstrate “tens” places, or opened up to subtract individual numbers from the total.  Another set features blocks of different sizes that allow students to visualize how adding numbers together will result in the same sum when the values are the same.

The manipulatives have been popular with students in Harris’ classroom as well as elsewhere throughout the school.  

“What will I spend it on?  I don’t know for sure, but there are a lot of possibilities.”

Harris has been involved in education for many years.  After graduating with a degree in education from USU she taught for three years before her kids were born.  While they were growing up, she volunteered in the school until becoming a teacher again.  “So I don’t feel like I ever left education,” she said.  “This is my second home,” she laughed.  “Okay, during the school year, it’s my first home!”

Congratulations to Mrs. Harris for being an Outstanding educator, and bringing more resources into her classroom as a result.