2023 Awards Banquet June 27, 2023 | Museum of Flight
Her citation, from the teaching colleague who nominated Mrs. Wommack:
Mrs. Wommack is the secondary school science teacher, teaching grades 7-12 in the Mansfield, Washington School District.
She is a veteran teacher with 17 years of experience and a constant seeker of professional development opportunities to bring new and fresh ideas back to her classroom. This summer, she will be participating in the second year of her Murdock research fellowship as well as traveling to the Space Coast for an NEH course about the history of space.
Previously, she has undergone professional development with UC Davis, Siemens, Honeywell, Army Outreach, U.S. Naval Academy, the Exploratorium in San Francisco, the Space Foundation, Yellowstone, NASA Glenn, NASA Wallops and the Columbia Scientific Ballooning Facility.
She believes that teachers have the summer off to participate in professional development and better themselves, and to that end has traveled to NASA Glenn twice for summer research, NASA Wallops for a rocketry workshop, NASA CSBF for scientific ballooning, San Francisco for a two week science phenomena workshop, Colorado Springs for a Space Across the curriculum workshop, and is a certified robotics instructor through UC Davis.
She is the advisor for our school’s STEM Club where she takes the opportunity to work with students in their areas of interest outside school hours. Students can be found coding robots, making 3D print projects, building electronics kits and many other activities. She believes the time she donates to STEM Club is important to allow students the time to explore their own interests in science.
Following her Fund For Teachers fellowship, she has created a repository of virtual field trips and related materials which can be found online at a link I can give you if you’d like to have it. (https://laurie918.wixsite.com/sciberspace ). These materials are available to any teachers to use for free and she continues to add to it all of the time.
In addition, she has been a Space Foundation Teacher Liaison for several years and an active participant and advocate for space education. Her curriculum regularly includes inquiry-based lessons on rocketry, drones, coding, robotics and engineering, creating a top-notch science/STEM Curriculum for our small rural school.
She has a master’s degree in Curriculum and Instruction with a STEM Emphasis and a NASA Endeavor STEM Teaching Certificate through a NASA Endeavor Fellowship. Her continuing education since becoming a teacher is extensive and goes wall beyond what is required to maintain her certification.
Mrs. Wommack has twice been a state finalist for Presidential Awards for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching. She was the recipient of the INDEEDS—Industry’s Excellent Educators Dedicated to STEM—Award for 2018 in Idaho. She was a Fund for Teachers fellow in 2022, an NEA Global Learning Fellow in 2021, a Qatar Foundation International fellow in 2018 and a National Geographic Grosvenor Fellow in 2016. She also traveled to India as part of an American Councils fellowship in 2012. As part of her NASA Endeavor Fellowship, she was one of two fellows to be awarded a NASA summer internship through which she helped create an award-winning professional development for teachers. She has twice been named Teacher of the Year for the Mansfield school district. All of her fellowships have made their way back to her classroom, enhancing her story-telling approach which engages students in her science curriculum. Her students have been winners at state science fairs.
Mrs. Wommack has worked tirelessly to obtain grants to supply the Science Department with the best STEM materials and equipment available including rocketry supplies, robots, Arduinos, electronics kits and more, all at no cost to this small rural school. She leads the after- school STEM club and has created quite a zoo in the classroom, which is particularly engaging for the students. This has made her classroom a favorite in the school, especially the turtles which she rescued after they were abandoned and nearly froze to death. In addition, she volunteers to judge e-Cybermission, a U.S. Army-sponsored online educational science fair for students in grades 6–9, and has done so for several years as well as reading and scoring fellowship applications for Fund for Teachers, National Geographic and reading journal proposals for NITARP.
Teachers at small rural schools have few opportunities for recognition because there is a very small population of teachers and students who have the chance to see what they do. It would mean a lot to our school if Mrs. Wommack could be found deserving of this award.