Emily Vanim

Tell us why you became a teacher

Ironically I was the first teacher in my family. I loved babysitting when I was younger and always dreamed of a job working with kids. As I grew up the natural path seemed to be teaching. Having had some bad experiences with kids and teachers growing up it was important to me that no other child felt unsafe at school. Plus I always loved learning, so I wanted all kids to have that love as well.

Tell us about your most memorable teaching experience

When I started teaching, I'd host Thanksgiving in my classroom. Parents would run stations and students would study physical and chemical changes of cooking. I'd tie it in to the whole curriculum. Watching real-life learning connect to the classroom showed me how important it was to consistently make the connections for kids. This was revisited during Covid when I taught our cyber school and once again was able to make the daily lessons connect to real world applications. The spark is incredible

What would you do with the $25,000?

Probably put a portion of it into supplies/goodies for my classroom, donate some to one of the charities my family likes to support, and use the rest towards my children's college funds.