Sarah McDaniel, Luke Koch, Rachel Tilly, and Gary Ainsworth

The team’s innovative teaching idea, “Vocational Life Skills Program,” focuses on helping students learn essential skills. The team is part of a charter school created for students who have disabilities. The charter school helps the students feel safe and enables them to get a good education away from peers who bully and tease, programs that are ineffective, and schools that are ill-equipped for the behavioral challenges and trauma the students have. With the Voya grant, the team plans to build and implement household items, such as a bed, washer/dryer and kitchen appliances. These items will help the students learn how to take care of themselves without relying on parents and/or staff in the future.