Finalist in Huge Grant Contest, Woonsocket Teacher Needs Your Votes

A Woonsocket teacher is in the running for $100,000 as one of a handful of finalists in national educational grant competition.

If he wins, he and his students will roll up their sleeves and knock down abandoned houses to build new ones.

And he needs your votes.

Charles Myers Jr., a teacher at Woonsocket Area Career and Technical Center, is one of just five teachers in the entire eastern third of the United States who are finalists in the Farmer’s Insurance Thank America’s Teachers Dream Big Teacher Challenge.

Myers has a vision to develop a school-to-work program in which students would join the community to demolish some of the abandoned decrepit homes in the city “to make way for the constructing of energy efficient, single-family dwellings.”

His proposal, 21st Century Solutions: Working Together for a Better Tomorrow, would give students real-life skills to help them after they graduate from high school. At the same time, the decaying and crime-attracting blight impeding Woonsocket’s slow revival would get some much-needed attention.

A teacher of construction technology — electrical, masonry, plumbing, carpentry — Myers said the project entails a ground-up demolition and construction on a piece of property that now looks like a scene from a Halloween haunted house exhibit with two boarded up multi-family homes scarred by rot, vandalism and fire.

“We did the design work, the cost estimates, we’ve acquired some of the materials, but we need some additional funds to complete the project,” Myers said in a brief video describing the project (see below).

The project will be focused on energy efficiency and the completed homes will be net-zero, which means that they generate on-site all the energy needed to heat and cool the entire house.

“Please support our construction initiatives in Woonsocket,” he said. “Please support our students, and our community and my school to make our home a better place.”

A total of 15 teachers, five each in the west, middle and eastern thirds of the country, are vying for the grant, each putting a different proposal on the table. Some ideas include a state-of-the-art kitchen and restaurant, an interpretative outdoor learning center, classroom technology, and a jungle gym “manufactured entirely out of musical instruments,” according to a Farmer’s Insurance news release.

Myers’ proposal stands out for the simple fact it would touch the lives of thousands of people, far beyond the perimeter of the Woonsocket Area Career and Technical Center.

Today through October 31, America can determine which of these teachers will be among the six winners of the $100,000 Dream Big Teacher Challenge, by voting daily at ThankAmericasTeachers.com.

The Thank America’s Teachers program was launched this year by Farmer’s Insurance.