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When MY HERO launched online, in 1995, educators and students around the world began to share their hero stories. In 2001, MY HERO won first prize for Best Nonprofit Website for Children at the ChildNet International Awards, sponsored by Cable and Wireless in the UK. In 2002, with a grant from The Foundation for the Contemporary Family, MY HERO launched the online Teachers Room, with links to lesson plans, resources and tutorials.
Media Arts educators and exceptional teachers like Jerrilyn Jacobs, Rowena Gerber, Skip Blumberg and Cheikh Darou Seck, shared lesson plans and their own examples for bringing MY HERO into the classroom. This newsletter celebrates, Laura Nietzer, an outstanding teacher, who has been part of MY HERO, and served as Director of Education Outreach for the past six years.
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Laura's connection to MY HERO began in 2009, when she participated in a tech boot camp held at Saddle River Day School in New Jersey. She understood and embraced the mission to celebrate the best of humanity and believed that it would benefit her students. She began incorporating MY HERO resources into her lessons.
In 2011 Laura asked her fourth-grade students to write an essay about their heroes. Nine-year-old Emmy Glick, chose her dad Jeremy Glick, a 911 hero. Emmy was three months old when he died. As a result of Emmy's hero story, the class decided to honor her father's memory with a fundraiser. in his name. Skip Blumberg, a video artist and MY HERO mentor, came to Laura's classroom to teach the students how to document their positive social activism. The students won an award at The MY HERO International Film Festival for their short documentary a Call to Action.
| Skip Blumberg mentors Emmy Glick and her classmates in Laura Nietzer's classroom | |
Laura's class joined the MY HERO Global Learning Circles, a partnership with the International Education and Resource Network (iEARN), connecting with students and teachers worldwide to discuss and collaborate on the concept of heroism.
MY HERO's Global Learning Circle was launched by Wendy Jewell, a writer & educator who traveled for MY HERO with her family to iEARN's Conference and Youth Summit in Slovakia in 2004. There along with teachers from around the world they decided to build bridges of understanding by sharing stories of everyday heroes. During her time as a teacher, Laura attended the iEARN International Education Conferences in the USA, Taiwan, Brazil, Canada, Morocco and shared MY HERO where ever she travelled.
| Laura Nietzer with Habiba Fardjellah from Algeria | | |
Laura joined the MY HERO staff as Education Outreach Director in 2019. She has been running the MY HERO - iEARN Learning Circle ever since. She has also curated content for the Teachers Room and Calendar and designed media-rich curriculum for a wide range of subjects and grade levels. During Covid, and continuing after, Laura helped expand the MY HERO Teachers Room, supervised MY HERO's Art Contests, and represented MY HERO at Global Education Conferences and at ISTE.
Over the years Laura has mentored and supported educators and students from across the USA and in China, Taiwan, Sierra Leone, Moldova, Ukraine, Poland, Azerbaijan, Romania, Iran, Senegal, Hong Kong, India, Pakistan, Egypt, Botswana, Uganda, Kenya, Russia, France, England, Morocco, Algeria, Slovenia, and Poland.
| Educators Mohamed Sidibay, Laura Nietzer, and Cheikh Darou Seck | At the end of month, Laura will be retiring, to travel with her husband and spend time with her family. We are so very grateful to Laura for being an important part of MY HERO all of these years. | | We are pleased to introduce Abigail Richardson to our community. She will be taking over as Education Outreach Director to support those interested in joining our global learning community. Over the last 30 years, Abigail’s passion for teaching and the arts has led her to take roles in education in the UK and US. She has been a MY HERO contributing writer and editor since 2018. Since 2021, Abigail has been supporting staff and students who contribute essays and poems to MY HERO. She is the editor and manager of the MY HERO homepage and calendar. | | Explore the MY HERO's Teacher's Room for media-rich lesson plans and resources to enhance classroom learning. Click on the calendar links below. | | Sylvia Earle Ocean Conservation Award | | |
Ocean enthusiasts can submit their short, hero-themed films for the Sylvia Earle Ocean Conservation Award, sponsored by MacGillivray Freeman Films Educational Foundation's One World One Ocean Campaign. The Earle Award goes to a student and a professional filmmaker who best feature the beauty of the ocean.
Sylvia Earle is a world-famous ocean explorer, scientist, and champion for the world's oceans. The Earle Award goes to films that show the beauty of the sea, or feature activists working to protect the oceans.
The deadline is May 1st.
| | Shetterly Portrait Contest | | |
Artists of all ages are welcome to submit a portrait of their hero to the Robert Shetterly Portrait Contest. Works submitted will be judged by artist Robert Shetterly, founder of Americans Who Tell the Truth and the MY HERO Gallery staff.
The deadline is May 1, 2025.
| | Mattie J.T. Stepanek Poetry Contest | | MY HERO International Film Festival | | MY HERO's Free Media Arts Resources | | We need and value your support for The MY HERO Project so we can continue to provide our free educational resources to millions of teachers, students and families around the world. | | Help support MY HERO's global learning community. | | | | |
