A fourth-grade science and math teacher at the Patricia A. Duran School in Hermon received the “Oscar” for educators Tuesday.
Sarah Collins received the $25,000 Milken Educator Award from the Milken Family Foundation in the school gym while students cheered for her during a surprise assembly.
Collins, 36, of Kenduskeag is the first teacher to receive the award in the Hermon School Department since the initiative began in Maine in 1990. The cash prize is unrestricted.
After the ceremony, Collins said she hoped to spend the money to expand outdoor, hands-on offerings for students. Currently, her class is studying earth science.
“We are outside picking rocks and digging in the dirt,” she said.
Milken Educator Awards Vice President Stephanie Bishop and Maine Commissioner of Education Pender Makin presented Collins with the award and welcomed her into the national Milken educator network. Bishop and Makin both won the award in 2001.
“Sarah has found ways to create a ‘living classroom’ for her students, creatively combining innovative technology practices with outdoor experiences that teach young learners about our world,” Bishop said. “Through virtual meetups with international scientists and online field trips around the globe, Sarah has inspired her students to connect to science in real and meaningful ways.”
Collins won a Maine Environmental Education Grant to develop an outdoor classroom and garden “lab” where children learn about soil quality and plant growth, according to the foundation. Students found fallen trees that became raised beds, and Collins solicited donations of soil and seeds from the community.
She also uses technology to expand students’ experiences beyond the classroom, arranging virtual meetings with scientists in a multitude of locations and occupations. Her young scientists have learned from a wildlife ecologist studying coyote behavior in South Carolina, a Hawaiian volcanologist and a scientist from a local university as she performed experiments in Antarctica.
The Bangor High School and University of Maine graduate said she was “shocked, very excited and highly honored to receive the prestigious award.”
She swept her 5-year-old daughter Grayce up in her arms and held the girl, tired after an evening of trick-or-treating, as she accepted the check. Collins knew someone at the school was getting the prize but had not suspected it would be her.
“I’m speechless, and that doesn’t happen very often,” Collins told the audience of students, teachers, dignitaries and previous winners.
Collins’ mother and grandmother were both teachers, so becoming one herself “felt natural,” she said.
The Milken Family Foundation will recognize up to 40 elementary educators around the country in the 2022-23 school year.
Bishop said the foundation’s staff is constantly looking for innovative teachers who are in the top one percent of the profession. How Collins came to the attention of the foundation was not made public Tuesday.
Last year’s winner, Hillary Hoyt, who has taught third grade at the Leroy H. Smith School in Winterport for 10 years, congratulated Collins on Tuesday. Hoyt was honored for her creative lessons that teach her students applicable skills, like how to buy a house or car, save for college and budget for daily expenses.