Vanessa Sawyer wins Flagship Kansas Tech Teacher of the Year Award
Wellington 4th grade teacher Vanessa Sawyer wins Kansas Tech Teacher of the Year.
By Tracy McCue, Sumner Newscow—Vanessa Sawyer, a fourth-grade teacher at Wellington Eisenhower Elementary, was recently named the Flagship Kansas Tech Teacher of the Year. We asked Sawyer a few questions about this award and robotic technology.
How did you win this award?
Erma Ratcliff (a local Wellington resident) asked me a few weeks ago if I’d be interested in attending the conference she was attending. So, I had that set and won a scholarship to attend. Then Monday night of last week, I received an email stating I’d won the Kansas Tech Teacher of the Year award. It seemed odd to me to think it was a scam the first time I heard about it. I spoke with Erma, and she told me she had nominated me, and then I realized it was real. So then I received several more emails from Flagship and then today I accepted it.
What is your extent in technology, and how did you get involved?
I’m a fourth-grade teacher at Eisenhower. I’ve always tried to use different forms of technology in my classroom for the last 15 years, but it’s a fast-paced entity, so I began attending conferences to learn more about how to implement it. As my youngest son became interested in robotics and technology, I was pretty much all in. I started running summer camps related to STEAM and robotics. Then two summers ago, I partnered with KSU for their LEAPES program, which allowed me to facilitate a three-week course about drones, AI, robotics, and coding. I’ve also attended a camp at KU in using drones in the classroom. This last summer I ran a camp but it was just stuff that I’ve done before or stuff I’ve seen to allow students to explore and learn more about coding, technology, etc. I’ve also started an elementary robotics team that competes at the middle school event in the spring. We start working after Christmas preparing for the two-day event.
Is Robotics the wave of the future? How will it benefit mankind?
Robotics isn’t the wave of the future; it’s the wave of now! LOL. It’s coming at us pretty fast, and the purpose of this summit was to show people that we need to work hard to get Kansas back in the “game” of technology. It will help mankind in that it will streamline basic tasks. It will just make everything more efficient but require us to have more people trained in basic code and problem-solving skills. One issue they discussed is that students graduate from our high schools and then leave the state to work in other states. Flagship is working to provide more opportunities for these jobs IN Kansas. The LEAPES program I was a part of had a similar goal.
You have conducted summer camps with STEAM Projects. What does that entail, and how long have you been doing this?
I have done STEAM camps for the last three to four summers. My goal is to just give kids the opportunity to explore and learn from basic failures to improve what they have or introduce them to robotics and coding. It’s something kids are drawn to and at a young age, they’re not worried about messing a robot or computer up, they’re there to explore and using their natural curious nature, they figure a lot of things out that a lot of adults can’t!
Where was this award given? What day? Were you surprised? Who was your competition?
I was awarded it today at the Flagship Ad Astra Summit in Wichita. I was completely shocked, but as I said further up, I had received the email a couple of days prior. I’m not sure who my competition was. You could nominate anyone you wanted.
Do you have anything else to add?
I’m pretty fortunate in many of my endeavors. My school, co-workers, principal, and co-teacher are VERY supportive of everything I do. Former Wellington Assistant Superintendent Jen Kern helped me a ton get traction in years past as to where to host and post all the opportunities online so that I had attendees. Cowley College has been great in allowing me to use their facility to host anything I’ve ever needed. It’s amazing the support we get from our community.
