Lilly Endowment Teacher Creativity Fellowship Grants Awarded
Lilly Teacher Creativity Fellowship
Lilly Endowment announced its award recipients for its 35th Teacher Creativity Fellowship Program (TCFP). This program supports educators throughout Indiana by providing resources for them to take time for meaningful renewal.
It is the foundation's belief that through new experiences, exploration and reflection, educators can cultivate renewed energy, innovative approaches to teaching and educational leadership, and thoughtful ways to encourage students’ creative thinking.
This is a highly competitive process, and again Zionsville Community Schools (ZCS) is represented well. This year three ZCS teachers earned two fellowship experiences. Congratulations!
Lora Karnuta, Union Elementary School
"How Nature can Nurture: A Quest to Experience and Practice Friluftsliv” – gain a deeper understanding of the Norwegian concept of friluftsliv, which translates as ‘free air life’ and describes the strong connection that Norwegians have with nature"
Union Elementary School Counselor Lori Karnuta
Union Elementary School Counselor Lori Karnuta
"I am incredibly excited and honored to have received the Lilly Teacher Creativity Fellowship. I will be spending a little more than two weeks traveling throughout Norway learning about and practicing the Norwegian concept of Friluftsliv which translates as ‘open air living’. This concept emphasizes Norwegian’s commitment to spending time outdoors daily. I am especially interested in the connection between spending time in nature and mental well-being. Stateside, I will be traveling to Seattle, Washington to visit an outdoor preschool at the University of Washington and exploring Olympia National Park. I look forward to sharing what I have learned from my experiences with Union staff and students!
Ashley Murray and Christopher Murray, Zionsville Middle School
“From Bird to Song: Exploring Acadia, Olympic, Everglades and Big Bend National Parks” – combine interests in nature and music by exploring four different United States national parks of varied biomes to observe and incorporate different birds’ songs in a commissioned, multi-movement work for band and orchestra students"
Zionsville Middle School Band Teacher Chris Murray
Zionsville Middle School Band Teacher Chris Murray
Zionsville Middle School Orchestra Teacher Ashley Murray
Zionsville Middle School Orchestra Teacher Ashley Murray
The best way to lead is by example, and by thinking differently and following our feet to far off places, we hope to encourage students to similarly strive for different and great things. Providing our students with the authentic experience of performing an original composition that was created from the beauty and birdsongs of four national parks that their teachers experienced firsthand, as well as creating another authentically connecting thread from ourselves, through our passions, and to our students, is incredibly powerful. Our hope is that this might inspire our students to think differently and to try the unconventional, and we hope that it will urge them to step outside, feel the sun on their shoulders, hear the birds in the trees, and follow their curiosity.
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