Lower Merion Teacher Wins National 'Teaching Tolerance' Award

A Lower Merion School District teacher has been honored with a national award.

Welsh Valley Middle School's social studies teacher Frances Weaver has won the Teaching Tolerance Award from the Southern Poverty Law Center, the district announced.

The Teaching Tolerance Award recognizes teachers for their commitment to reducing prejudice and promoting equality and justice in schools.

The award announcement states:

"For Frances Weaver and her students, the past is the present. An innovative social studies teacher, she creates transformative lesson plans based on current events that ask her students to connect modern moments to moments in history using inquiry and research. She applies this approach because she wants students to have the skills necessary to identify historical patterns and to advocate for justice throughout their lives.

'I don’t want my students to feel like I know everything,' she says. 'I want us to have a shared dialogue where we figure it out, where we read multiple sources, where we piece together the different parts of history to make it a whole picture.'

Weaver uses academic rigor and culturally proficient lesson planning to help deconstruct biases and to close achievement gaps—priorities she has focused on since she first launched her teaching career. At the center of all her work are respect, acceptance and the celebration of diversity. Weaver says, 'Conversations at the dinner table are changing in Lower Merion because of my students.'"