ASMSA Teacher Lands National Prize for Educational Innovation

Dr. Patrycja Anna Krakowiak-Valdivia, a life sciences instructor at the Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences and the Arts (ASMSA) in Hot Springs, is one of 10 recipients of the grand prize from The Henry Ford Innovation Nation Teacher Innovator Awards.

The ten national grand prize winners, along with 10 first place winners, were chosen based on their ability to demonstrate habits of an innovator as well as being educators who inspire their students to challenge the rules and take risks, demonstrate how to be collaborative and empathetic, and teach the value of learning from failure and staying curious, according to a The Henry Ford press release. The awards were co-sponsored by Raytheon Technologies and open to pre-k through 12th grade teachers.

The Henry Ford is a museum and national historic landmark in Dearborn, Michigan that explores the American experience of innovation, resourcefulness and ingenuity that helped shape America and enjoys over 1.8 million annual visitors. In 2014, they aired their first-ever national television series, the Emmy-winning weekly Saturday morning CBS show, The Henry Ford’s Innovation Nation, hosted by Mo Rocca, CBS’ “Sunday Morning” correspondent. The half-hour show tells the stories behind innovators of the past and the present, highlighting the talent and dedication required to bring their inventions to life.

The show also shares a name with the award won by Krakowiak-Valdivia — one she was surprised to receive notification of via email, because she didn’t even know it existed until just before the deadline.

ASMSA director, Corey Alderdice, is the one who originally put the award on her radar.

“When I looked at the application, it was several pages long and [I] had to write a lot of explanations, but I didn’t know how I was going to answer that,” Krakowiak-Valdivia said.

Krakowiak-Valdivia said she and some of her colleagues started on the application but when they got to the portion where they were asked to submit student-recorded videos of their take on the class, almost everyone withdrew.

“I reached out to my students pretty late and I got such a huge response I couldn’t even use all of them.” Krakowiak-Valdivia said. “It solidified my willingness to try because they felt like I do innovate, I do make a difference in their life, [and] I should be trying for this. So, the students really were the ones who [helped] me along.”

Made possible by program sponsor Raytheon Technologies, grand prize winners will receive $1,500 in funds for their classroom, select merchandise from The Henry Ford and a 1-year premium subscription to The Henry Ford’s educational products and services. In the past, the winners were also given an all-expenses-paid 5-day “Immersion Experience” at The Henry Ford, but due to COVID-19, this year’s trip is cancelled.

Krakowiak-Valdivia already has a mental wish list of things she wants to spend the honorarium on, but most importantly, it will allow her to continue something she’d already started behind the scenes.

Two years ago, she applied for and received an Advocate grant from the Society for Science & the Public (SSP) — funding that allowed her to identify underrepresented students and provide them with a classroom environment where she could provide detailed instruction and enhanced preparation on conducting research projects and present the students with multiple opportunities to enter scientific competitions. After attending workshops last summer in Washington D.C. with other SSP Advocate grant recipients, Krakowiak-Valdivia returned to Arkansas where she was able to work with the eligible students at ASMSA and in turn, watch them excel. While all students attended a variety of scientific competitions and awards, 5 of the students who were advised by her and colleague Dr. Whitney Holden qualified for the SSP Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF). However, the fair has been canceled because of COVID-19.

“We had an amazing group of students and an amazing year — there were some gaps that we filled and that’s what we worked so hard on,” Krakowiak-Valdivia said.

The grant is recurring and Krakowiak-Valdivia did reapply, but did not receive it a second time. While it’s bittersweet to exit the program, she knows there are other teachers who also need the grant.

“I have benefitted from this program, I have initiated it in our school and [SSP Advocate Grant Program] knows I’ll keep going. They know they can take these funds and this support and put it in a teacher who needs it,” Krakowiak-Valdivia said. “They wrote to me and said, ‘you have pushed and you have come to where we want teachers to go’.”

Much of the work she has started in her classroom will be continued with the funds from the The Henry Ford Innovation Nation Teacher Innovator Awards.

“It’s interesting how one type of grant fuels an award,” Krakowiak-Valdivia said. “It does make me sit back and think — if we support teachers, there are many fruits to be born. If a teacher has support for some programs, it will multiply.”

Krakowiak-Valdivia not only teaches students but also other teachers. Along with Dr. Whitney Holden, she co-directs an Advanced Biology course in ASMSA’s STEM Pathways digital learning program — Advanced Biology Plus Program. Designed to help AP Biology teachers prepare their students to take the Advanced Placement Biology class and test, the course is in its 4th year and currently has over 40 teachers in its summer bootcamp, which is only the beginning. Rich with content, the course provides a variety of resources, tools and enrichment for AP Biology teachers to use with all levels of students. Learning how to use everything from Pear Deck to Quizlet Live as well as being asked to submit labs and complete worksheets, the teachers became the students in Holden and Krakowiak-Valdivia’s course.

“We go for innovation; that’s why I got the award — I have to innovate,” Krakowiak-Valdivia said. “Normally, a teacher can become complacent, a teacher feels comfortable in the role they’ve been given… they have material from last year [and can] just reuse the material. I think most teachers do that and I can’t blame them, it’s so much work… Because I have 40 teachers and about 600 students depending on me, I don’t become complacent.”

For Krakowiak-Valdivia, innovating is about getting students not only more involved in their learning endeavors, but actually excited about it.

“Engagement, excitement and passion is really what we drive. If some tool doesn’t have those three components, we don’t pursue it. The tool doesn’t necessarily have the components, it’s what it pulls out of the student,” Krakowiak-Valdivia said.

She said that sometimes, they would get to drive to schools around the state with ASMSA’s biotech equipment to do labs with Arkansas students. From DNA fingerprinting to glow-in-the-dark bacteria, the labs are meant to spark inspiration within the students and take hands-on learning to an entirely new level. Some teachers have even been inspired to start independent research and science fairs at their own schools.

“That’s really something I think is innovative because it excites students all over Arkansas to know we care that much about them and we do and every kid is important and every student should be inspired,” Krakowiak-Valdivia said. “In many rural schools, students don’t see their path and that’s really sad. Every student in Arkansas should see a potential path to college if they want it.”

Another resource for students is the Arkansas Summer Research Institute, a course for STEM undergraduate students hosted by hosted by EPSCoR/The Center for Advanced Surface Engineering (CASE) and the Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences, & the Arts (ASMSA) and held on ASMSA’s campus for the last 5 years. The program takes participants through the basics of research and offers resume building, practice interviews, panel discussions and so much more. Over 100 students are signed up for this year’s all-virtual ASRI.

With the overwhelming amount of learning environments that have been moved to online platforms because of coronavirus, Krakowiak-Valdivia thinks there is no better time to tap into innovation than now.

“What we got, as educators, is an extra incentive or necessity — necessity drives ingenuity — you have to be forced sometimes into uncomfortable situations to develop online technology that we should be using already. Colleges do it and we should do it as well, not to distance ourselves from students but to increase their involvement and learning and if I can innovate with these tools, I can do these labs cheaper in the future because it’ll be done with stuff you can find in a kitchen,” Krakowiak-Valdivia said. “Innovation is what is going to allow students to come to the same place.”

Krakowiak-Valdivia holds a bachelor of science in chemistry with an emphasis in molecular biology, a Ph.D. in human genetics, and she has completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. She later worked as an assistant professor at Arkansas Children’s Hospital Research Institute for three years studying genetic and environmental causes of birth defects. Born in Poland, Krakowiak-Valdivia moved to the United States when she was 11 years old and has been a U.S. citizen for almost 20 years. She currently lives here in Arkansas with her husband Martin Valdivia, who is originally from Peru, and their three daughters Teresa, Krystyna, and Anna.