TVEA Spotlight TVUSD Governing Board Meeting

Good Evening,

First, on behalf of TVEA I would like to offer Ms. Hinkson congratulations for her re-election to the Governing Board in Trustee Area 2 and congratulations as well to Barbara Brosch and Adam Skumawitz for their election to Trustee Areas 3 and 4 respectively. Ms. Farnbach and Mr. Hill, TVEA wishes you well in the future.

Second, we have been in the process of presenting TVEA OVATION! Awards to Fall 2018 Recipients. This is our second year of our OVATION Member Recognition Program. We have fourteen (14) recipients at twelve (12) different school sites this fall including five (5) sites with their first ever recipient. It is powerful for employees to be recognized in front of their staffs and be witness to what peers submitted in their nominations. I would like to thank all the site principals who have provided a few minutes of staff meeting time to allow us to share the OVATION! honor publicly at their site. A special thanks to Kelly Gradstein at Paloma Elementary who invited us to present the PES OVATION! at the Friday Flag Ceremony.

Finally, tonight I will speak to TVEA’s ongoing participation in the CTA Institute for Teaching Grant Program for 2018-19.

We are pleased and proud to have had a TVEA member once again receive a grant for this school year. This is impressive as according to CTA there were a record 159 grant applications across the state for 2018-19 with 52 recipients- and one of those is a TVUSD Teacher.

Kelly Maxey, would you please come up to the podium.

Kelly is a teacher at Vail Ranch Middle School.

She has been a TVUSD teacher since 2005. She taught students at Nicolas Valley and Crowne Hill Elementary before moving to Vail Ranch.

Kelly wrote in her successful grant application of $5000.00 titled “Advanced Robotics”:

In 2012, I was one of 50 teachers nationwide selected to participate in the NASA Endeavor Teaching Fellowship. I spent 18 months working with NASA scientists to develop educational units that would impact student learning in real-world contexts. The focus was STEM and it was during this time that Robotics became my passion. As a result, two years ago my classroom at Vail Ranch Middle School became the first in Temecula Valley USD to offer an Introduction to Robotics class. The purpose of this grant is to purchase materials to expand my program to include Advanced Robotics as a course at VRMS.

Kelly shared with TVEA about receiving this grant: “This grant is meaningful to me because robotics is my passion. I believe that all students should be learning how to code robots because it is engaging, cooperative, and the very best kind of learning. It is problem solving at its best! This grant will allow us to expand our program at VRMS to include a competitive robotics team and reach more students at VRMS”

TVEA would like to present Kelly with a framed certificate plaque commemorating not only her achievement but her extra effort in making instruction meaningful to her VRMS students.