A Rochelle teacher has won a $100,000 grant in the Farmers Insurance Dream Big Challenge.
Vic Worthington is in Rochelle Middle School’s vocational tech department, teaching kids about career skills, and job options. A couple of years ago, he’d received a ten thousand dollar grant from Monsanto that he used for teaching materials. He says it definitely made a difference. Then he saw that Farmer’s Insurance was offering a one-hundred thousand dollar grant to schoolteachers.
“I thought, man, if I could improve the rest of the vo tech department, we could really give kids a good head start going into high school on, “how could I get excited about a job skill and pursue a path rather than wandering from one class to another, surviving from one class to another?”,” he says.
Worthington called his proposal “Full STEAM Ahead.’ That’s from the now familiar acronym STEM, for science, technology, engineering and math, with the addition of the word “arts.” Worthington says students need to develop their artistic side to succeed, and that goes for vocational tech classes, too.
“If I can give them the skills that will get them hired as a technician working a sound booth in Nashville, or being a head chef at a restaurant who can design the menu, and you know, use all those creative skills you have to have. Or, what the heck, I’ve seen my plumber and electrician do things that blow my mind with all their creativity,” he says.
Worthington says the money will help other teachers buy computers, tools, textbooks and other equipment and teaching materials. But he says it’s less about what the grant will allow teachers to buy than what it will allow them to do: provide a richer learning experience for their students.
