South Portland High School Career Prep Teacher receives 2005 Cable’s Leaders in Learning Award.

For using cable technology to help students learn about the importance of voting and its connection to their own lives, their school, their families, and the community, Julie York is being honored nationally for her substantial contributions to learning in South Portland.

Time Warner Cable New England and Cable in the classroom, the cable industry’s education foundation, announced today that York is a winner of the new Cable’s Leaders in Learning Award, which recognizes the most inventive classroom educators, administrators, community leaders, and policymakers who are transforming education from Kindergarten through high school (K-12).

“To be selected as Cable’s Leaders in Learning Award winners, these awardees demonstrated dedication to improving learning for all children,” said Helen Soule, PhD., executive director of Cable in the Classroom. “They did this by reaching beyond the familiar to support and encourage young people to achieve their best. Armed with a high quality education, young people will be prepared to meet the world that awaits them – and to improve and transform it for their own children.”

York is being recognized in the Pushing the Envelope award category for using cable programming, especially CNN, to develop a student voting project, complete with student-created 30-second radio ads, public service announcements, Power Point presentations, brochures, posters, websites, video interviews, written interviews, and a school-wide mock election. Aligned with Maine Learning Results, the project helped students gain a better understanding of civic responsibility and to share that understanding with their families, who were invited into classroom activities. Parents commented that they felt the project helped them open communication with their children about voting and democracy. York has a long waiting list to get into her classes.

“Amazing results and awareness resulted from the project,” said York, “students learned and the community got involved. Through multiple multimedia projects, students developed their awareness of the importance of voting and civic responsibility.”

York and the other Leaders in Learning Award winners are in Washington, D.C. this week to attend a gala awards ceremony, to meet with Members of Congress and education leaders, and to participate in a series of professional development events. Awardees receive a cash prize from Cable in the Classroom, in addition to the trip to Washington.

The awards ceremony, hosted by Bill Kurtis, host of A&E’s American Justice and producer of Investigative Reports and Cold Case Files, will take place on May 17 at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer will interview award-winners during the awards presentations. Marc Summers, host of Unwrapped on the Food Network, John Anderson, an ESPN Sportscenter anchor, and Jeff Johnson, host of the BET documentary series The Cousin Jeff Chronicles, will present the awards. Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. J. Dennis Hastert will receive a tribute from the cable industry. Rising comedian Ted Alexandro will be performing a ten-minute routine.

“We hope that these awards, and the exceptional work on behalf of learning they honor, will move others to strive for similar excellence and stretch the boundaries of the kind of excellence that is possible in education,” said Soule. “We at Cable in the Classroom will always have that – and these awardees – close to the heart of our mission.”

The awards fall into four categories:

– General Excellence – Awards given for general excellence in education.

– Pushing the envelope – Awards given to those redefining the education frontier by using cable content or cable technology.

– Policy maker – Awards given to federal, state, or local policymakers who have contributed to the improvement of K-12 education in the broadest sense;

– Media literacy – An award given in partnership with the National PTA on recognize excellence in advancing media literacy skills.

For more information about Cable’s Leaders in Learning Awards, please visit www.ciconlne.org or www.leadersinlearningawards.org.