Long Beach Educator Named National Toyota Teacher of the Year
April 29 2013 - 8:00AM
Marketwired
The National Center for Family Literacy (NCFL) and Toyota today
announced that Carolyn Blocker, an educator from Long Beach,
California with nearly 25 years of experience, will receive the
2013 Toyota Teacher of the Year award at the National Conference on
Family Literacy on April 28 in Louisville, Kentucky.
For 17 years, Toyota has sponsored the Teacher of the Year award
in partnership with the National Center for Family Literacy to
honor educators nationwide who reach beyond the classroom to impact
families' lives.
This year's winner, Blocker has worked for the past seven years
to improve the lives of more than 300 families as a parent
education teacher at the Long Beach School for Adults. Blocker and
her community's participants boast numerous achievements, including
significant parent engagement and a 90 percent retention of
families, despite facing hurdles ranging from economic challenges
to language barriers.
Blocker will receive $20,000, which she plans to use to
implement a program called Full S.T.E.A.M. Ahead in the LBC. This
new initiative will give families the opportunity to explore their
Long Beach City community through the lens of Science, Technology,
Engineering, Art, and Math (S.T.E.A.M.), a curriculum framework
that merges sciences and the arts. In this family engagement
project, parents will attend regular workshops and plan five parent
and child excursions in the community -- exposing parents and
children to a global educational approach while building a stronger
workforce one family at a time.
"At the beginning of each year, I look at the new group of
parents as my garden; I know that we all grow as a result of our
experiences together," says Blocker. "With family literacy as a
foundation, parents become more confident, children become more
prepared and families become more successful."
"For more than twenty years, we have been a proud partner of the
National Center for Family Literacy and we are so excited to honor
Carolyn Blocker with the Toyota Teacher of the Year award," said
Patricia Salas Pineda, group vice president of National
Philanthropy and the Toyota USA Foundation at Toyota Motor North
America. "Her extraordinary work promoting family literacy in her
community is a testament to the fact that when parents and children
learn together great things can happen."
"Carolyn's vision, wisdom and hard work are a testament to the
ultimate goal of NCFL -- engaging families in the pursuit of
learning together," says Sharon Darling, president & founder of
NCFL.
Mary Ellen Lesniak, an English as a Second Language adult and
family coordinator at the Tolton Center in Chicago, was named The
Toyota Teacher of the Year runner-up. Lesniak will receive a $2,500
grant, which she plans to use to purchase iPads for her classroom,
as well as a scholarship to attend the conference.
Since 1991, Toyota and NCFL have forged successful programs to
promote family literacy in the United States. Today, the
Toyota/NCFL partnership accounts for 256 family literacy sites in
50 cities and 30 states. As part of this partnership, the Toyota
Teacher of the Year award has been presented annually since 1997
and recognizes individual teachers' contributions to improving
literacy among youth and adults. Additional information on Toyota's
commitment to improving education nationwide is available at
www.toyota.com/about/our_commitment/philanthropy/education.
ABOUT NCFL The National Center for Family
Literacy, founded in 1989 and based in Louisville, Ky., is the
worldwide leader in family literacy. More than 1 million families
have made positive educational and economic gains as a result of
NCFL's work, which includes training more than 150,000 teachers and
thousands of volunteers. Visit www.famlit.org for more
information.
ABOUT TOYOTA Toyota (NYSE: TM) established
operations in the United States in 1957 and currently operates 10
manufacturing plants. There are more than 1,500 Toyota, Lexus and
Scion dealerships in the United States, which sold more than 2
million vehicles in 2012. Toyota directly employs over 31,000 in
the United States and its investment here is currently valued at
more than $19.5 billion, including sales and manufacturing
operations, research and development, financial services and
design. Toyota's annual purchasing of parts, materials, goods and
services from U.S. suppliers totals over $27.5 billion.
For more information about Toyota, visit www.toyota.com,
www.toyotanewsroom.com or www.toyotainaction.com.
MEDIA CONTACTS Luisa Montes 415-591-8464 Email Contact
Luis Rosero Toyota 212-715-7493 Email Contact
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