October 12, 2001

Contact: Allison Rose Lopez, KU School of Education, (785) 864-9610.

Kansas City 7th-grade reading teacher wins KU Jayhawk Educator award

LAWRENCE -- A Kansas City, Kan., seventh-grade reading teacher from Eudora has been named Jayhawk Educator of the Year by the University of Kansas School of Education.

April Hawkins of Eudora, who teaches at Piper Middle School in Kansas City, Kan., will receive the award during the School of Education National Advisory Board's fall meeting, 8:30 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 13, in 247 Joseph R. Pearson Hall.

Larry Breedlove, Piper Middle School principal, and Michael Rooney, USD 203 superintendent, Kansas City, Kan., plan to be present when Hawkins receives the award.

The award recognizes outstanding teaching and classroom leadership by a KU School of Education graduate in Kansas. Recipients must have served at least three years in a Kansas K-12 classroom.

Hawkins received a bachelor's degree in 1990 and a master's degree in 1997, both from KU's School of Education. She has been teaching for 10 years -- at Piper for eight years and at Felton Middle School in Hays for two years.

Hawkins twice received the National Association of Secondary School Principals John Herklotz Award for Outstanding Contributions to Teaching Democracy. In 1993 the award honored Hawkins' organization of an interdisciplinary election unit at Felton school in Hays. In 1997 her organization of a mock election unit at Piper in Kansas City, Kan., earned the national award.

She has also received Excellence in Teaching grants twice from the Learning Exchange, the Kansas City Star and the Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce. The grants funded an interdisciplinary seventh-grade community service unit developed at Piper. Through the project, seventh-graders toured community service agencies in Kansas City, Kan., and offered a volunteer fair at their school. As an extension of the project, Hawkins organized a group of Piper teachers to periodically buy, cook and serve dinner at the Shalom House, a Kansas City, Kan., homeless shelter.

Hawkins received a grant from the Kansas Association of Middle Level Educators to buy books to be used in literature circles for an interdisciplinary unit on the Civil War at Piper.

A colleague nominating Hawkins for the award described her use of such innovative teaching strategies as reading workshops, literature circles and a reading club at Piper that Hawkins developed and sponsors. In addition to sponsoring field trips to local literature and poetry festivals, the Piper reading club invites famous authors to the school.