A passion for education

COEUR d’ALENE — Being a teacher requires a special kind of someone.

Someone who has a passion for learning. Someone who exhibits patience and looks for ways to engage.

“When you’ve got 30 different kids in your room, how do you make learning authentic for 30 different kids?” said Courtney Greene, a fifth-grade teacher at Fernan STEM Academy. “I’ve noticed as the years go on, kids expect that authenticity.”

A teacher for 21 years, Greene has spent 20 of those years dedicating time in Idaho classrooms.

“Kids are just, I don't know if it’s their innocence or what it is, but they’re just amazing human beings that think they can still conquer the world,” Greene said. “So you get that joy every day, feeling like you can just change the world.”

Greene’s work has not gone without recognition as she was recently announced as a recipient of the Presidential Award for Excellence in Math and Science Teaching (PAEMST).

Each year, two teachers from each state and territory can receive the award, one for science and one for math. The PAEMST is the highest award kindergarten through 12th-grade math and science teachers can receive from the U.S. government.

“(Greene) is such a remarkable teacher, and this honor is so well-deserved,” said Kathy Livingstone, principal of Fernan STEM Academy. “She is an eager learner and leader who is in a continual search for new knowledge, but never the limelight.”

Greene said she decided to become a teacher several years ago because she had kids and thought with that job she’d be able to spend more time with them.

“That’s not true at all,” she laughed. “Teachers work a lot.”

Greene said she’s particularly interested in the environment, and the local ecosystem is her passion. She said she wants students to ask their own questions and wonder about the world so they take ownership of their learning.

“Kids are natural scientists because they do ask all those questions,” Greene said. “So almost everything we start with is framed around questions.”

Greene said she takes the standards and turns them into questions that the kids ask more questions about, and that’s how they build their unit.

“There’s no other profession where you can see, like, hope for the future,” Greene said. “In a time right now, where sometimes it’s really hard to see hope in our futures, kids definitely have that. They give you that. They’re smart and thoughtful and kind.”

About 12 years ago, Greene attended a weeklong professional development program in New York put on by the Mickelson ExxonMobil Teachers Academy. Greene said it was the first professional development program she attended that truly taught her how to teach inquiry-based learning.

“It was just like a light bulb for me,” Greene said. “This is what kids need, to really just dive in and explore and ask questions.”

She said a struggle for teachers is getting all the students engaged, and to help keep them focused she uses a lot of hands-on work. The classroom doesn’t have desks, but rather tables with chairs set around them, spread out in the room.

“They don’t sit very much,” Greene said.

She said because the kids’ attention span can be short, there’s lots of moving around to keep the kids engaged.

Fifth-graders Adrianna Barker and Brooke Anderton said they appreciated how Greene provided them with hands-on experiences rather than giving them piles of homework or a video to watch.

“She’s really nice,” Adrianna said.

“She makes all of our work fun,” Brooke said. “She’s a really good teacher.”

Greene said that the relationships with kids is part of what makes the job so special.

“Even on a rough day, you get to the cafeteria and you’re walking through the line, and the relationship you have with kids, like you can banter with them,” Greene said. “You just have that relationship with kids.”

Greene was nominated for the national award three years ago by her past teaching mentor, but because of COVID, the process to receive the award was extended. She was originally teaching at Bryan Elementary School when nominated, but finished her application at Fernan STEM Academy.

For the application, teachers had to write about their philosophy of education and highlight and record themselves teaching a lesson.

Greene’s application centered around a class project on researching the historic impact of erosion on the ecosystem through erosion labs, articles and historical documents.

The students studied the rehabilitation of Latah Creek, called Hangman’s Creek by the Coeur d’Alene Tribe. Agricultural changes in the area caused damage to the ecosystem.

Students collected evidence and wrote suggestions to the Tribe's scientists for adding or removing restorative practices based on their data collection.

“I was excited because I feel like the work that we did was really authentic,” Greene said. “That was kind of a cool thing to have it all connected to.”

Upon receiving the award, Greene said it was a strange feeling.

“There’s like 10 other teachers I could think of that deserve it in my book more than I do,” Greene said.

Livingstone said Greene is a humble person and dynamic teacher.

“She uses community contacts and a wide array of resources to create enriching and engaging math lessons and bring science and history to life for students,” Livingstone said. “Courtney constantly seeks out professional opportunities to serve others as well as opportunities for personal and professional growth.”

Unless there is a delay, recipients of the national award are invited to go to Washington, D.C. for a week in spring to attend a ceremony and receive a certificate signed by the president, as well as participate in professional development opportunities. They also received a $10,000 award from the National Science Foundation.

Greene said she owes a lot to all the teachers and other people she has worked with for the last 21 years.

“Those are the people that got me here,” Greene said. “I tend not to believe in myself and those are the people, like somebody else nominating me. I would have never applied for this on my own.”