Lories Slockbower
![](/sites/www/files/styles/unsung_hero/public/unsung_hero_portraits/NJ_Lories%20Slockbower.jpg.webp?itok=R3HSiLqJ)
Slockbower’s innovative teaching idea, “STEM Stories,” focuses on developing students’ creativity, collaboration, communication and critical thinking skills through the integration of math and science based story-telling within an ethnically diverse population. The Voya grant will enable the school to purchase materials and technology that allow students to write and create stories in their mother-tongue and English, and then have these stories subsequently converted into a storybook app. This app will then be downloaded on smartphones and tablets and accessed globally. Slockbower believes that this approach enriches students’ 21st century skills by utilizing technology and the power of storytelling to understand the diverse backgrounds and cultures that surround us and make us all unique.