Elementary School Teacher Wins Christa McAuliffe Sabbatical Award

NEW LONDON, NH — This year’s Christa McAuliffe Sabbatical Award winner is an elementary school teacher from the western part of the state who will take a year off to focus on a project that she hopes will enhance classroom learning. Kristin Lizotte, a teacher at Kearsarge Regional Elementary School, has been awarded a full year’s salary and expenses of up to $12,000 to complete the project. She will take the 2019-2020 school year off to develop project-based learning opportunities for students and connect with other educators around the state looking to introduce more experiential learning into their classrooms, according to Superintendent Winfried Feneberg.

The project, she noted, will encourage students to eye real world challenges and problems in order to complete tasks, grow, and strengthen their skills.

Lizotte will be feted at the annual EDies event on June 8, 2019.

"This type of teaching and learning is engaging for students, and involves them in activities where they can make choices about their learning and promote skills like collaboration, problem-solving, and critical thinking," Lizotte said. "It also connects what they are learning to the world outside of the classroom and helps them to see the connections between academic subjects and how they are related to real world problems."

When completed, Lizotte will launch a new website for educators so they can access the materials she acquires during the sabbatical while also interacting with each other.

In a press release, Feneberg congratulated Lizotte and added that she was looking forward to her exploring the topic and bringing what she learns next year into classrooms in the future.

The Christa McAuliffe Sabbatical Award was created as an opportunity to allow exceptional teachers to take time off to explore different educational strategies and programs. Recipients must be certified New Hampshire teachers, need to be employed in a public school, and have at least five years of teaching experience. The program honors the Concord social studies teacher and astronaut who passed away in the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster in 1986.