One of the ‘most outstanding teachers America has to offer’ is in a Lexington classroom

After winning $10,000 and being honored by the White House with a Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching recently, Kristi Fehr went back to her portable classroom-turned-science lab at Lexington’s Cassidy Elementary School.

On a Tuesday in December, like every school day, the teacher of 25 years worked with K-5 science classes from throughout the school. In one class period, teams of fourth graders used toy cars equipped with solar panels and LED lights in an experiment on transforming solar energy to electrical energy and then to motion energy.

“I really believe in kids (working) like a real scientist and engineer, keeping track of their thoughts and being able to change their thinking as they go,” said Fehr. When students generate their own questions, “I think there’s more buy in and they learn more.”

Fehr teaches a total of 31 classes and more than 700 kids in her brightly decorated, well-equipped lab where she broaches serious scientific subjects such as the concept of matter with even the youngest students. She said she creates lessons on a “deep scale” that support what students learn in their traditional science classrooms.

“It’s pretty cool,” fourth-grader John Crandall said of his time in Fehr’s lab. “ We have a good science teacher....we are learning a lot from her, we’re learning how to do a proper experiment.“

How did Fehr get the highest award given by the U.S. Government to kindergarten through 12th grade teachers of mathematics and science?

In part, she piloted the state’s first Trout in the Classroom project to connect students’ understanding of the trout species and of water quality.

She created an afterschool science club called Scientists and Engineers Empowering Kids, where she brings in professionals with the same demographics as her students. She partnered with an engineer to install a multifaceted outdoor classroom, and with a scientist to connect her students with a NASA solar eclipse balloon launch.

Her students get such varied experiences as learning about sound waves, snipping herbs that they grow themselves to take home for Thanksgiving Dinner and even figuring out by studying animal tracks, what is eating the pumpkins in their school garden.

She gets more than 100 kids ready for the district science fair each year and volunteers to make presentations at district and state science teacher conferences.

At Cassidy since 2014, Fehr also taught in science labs at Southern and Liberty elementary schools in Fayette County.

Fehr has been working since 2017 through the selection process for the presidential award that teachers from all 50 states receive. The other winners announced in Kentucky in October were Deborah Brock, Simon Kenton High School in Kenton County; Melanie Ramey, Highland Elementary School in Johnson County; and Erin Schneider, Atherton High School in Jefferson County.

In addition to the $10,000 from the National Science Foundation; Fehr received a certificate signed by the president; and a trip to Washington, D.C. in October where she participated in professional development activities.

Fehr is free to spend the money for her personal use. But she expects some of it will be used in her lab at Cassidy, where she said she has already spent thousands of her own dollars over the years.

“Kristi Fehr,” a statement from the National Science Foundation said, “represents the most outstanding teachers America has to offer and serves as both a model and an inspiration to students and fellow teachers.”