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Jersey City Public Schools Teacher Surprised with $25,000 Milken Educator Award
Robert O’Donnell Jr. from Christa McAuliffe School presented with New Jersey’s 2013 “Oscar of Teaching”
October 09, 2013
Jersey City Public Schools’ Robert O’Donnell Jr., a science teacher at Christa McAuliffe School was surprised with an unrestricted $25,000 Milken Educator Award at a school-wide assembly. Dr. Jane Foley, senior vice president of the Milken Educator Awards presented the honor, which will be the only one given in New Jersey this year. Up to 40 Awards will be presented across the country in 2013. Joining in the celebration was Tim Matheney, director of the Office of Evaluation for the New Jersey Department of Education.
“Our public education system is at the heart of America’s promise and essential to safeguarding the American dream for future generations,” said Lowell Milken, chairman and co-founder of the Milken Family Foundation. “With research confirming that effective teachers represent the single most important school-related factor in raising student achievement, it is important to honor them, learn from them, and inspire more capable people to enter the profession. As the program’s motto extols, the future belongs to the educated.”
About the Award Recipient
In Robert O'Donnell Jr.'s Jersey City classroom, sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders get hands-on science experience as they work to transform an abandoned local reservoir into an urban oasis and environmental learning center, educating the wider community in the process. Through O'Donnell's commitment to increasing scientific literacy, Project Reservoir has become a nationally recognized program that has helped boost achievement at Christa McAuliffe School–PS 28, where about 75% of students are Hispanic and about 83% are considered economically disadvantaged.
Before and after school, students can be found feeding mosquito-eating fathead minnows, culturing paramecia, maintaining 20 breeding tanks, analyzing data and updating the project website. The aquaculture room, in fact, has become a field-trip destination for other schools, and Project Reservoir has partnerships with many organizations, including the Reservoir Preservation Alliance, St. Joseph's School for the Blind and the Newark Museum—which O'Donnell persuaded to donate three 500-gallon fish tanks.
O'Donnell's classroom is a respectful, caring, collaborative place where he conveys high expectations of all. With the door always open to students and parents, he maintains a classroom website that has had more than 18,000 hits and a YouTube channel of past projects with more than 23,500 views. Former students return often to benefit from O'Donnell's continued mentoring. He is known for his sensitivity to students at risk, who go on to become successful college students.
His dedication to science education has resulted in improved test scores: More than 83% of O'Donnell's eighth-graders pass the New Jersey Assessment of Skills and Knowledge science exam each year, outperforming the state average. During the 2012-13 school year his students won more than $56,000 in savings bonds from science competitions. O'Donnell, who has taught for 11 years and holds an M.A. in the teaching of physics, also coaches volleyball, basketball and track, and his teams have won numerous district championships.
O'Donnell is also a generous mentor to student teachers and to peers throughout the district who want to make Project Reservoir part of their science programs. He collaborates with other district educators and conducts presentations to colleagues on educational technology and hands-on science instruction. He is coordinator of PS 28's science fair and is active on the Jersey City Public Schools Science Task Force. O'Donnell has represented PS 28 for events at the national level, including in 2012 when Project Reservoir won a Grand Prize in the Disney Planet Challenge and in 2010 when the school was named a finalist for an Intel Schools of Distinction Award for its STEM activities. As one administrator put it, Robert O'Donnell Jr. "serves as a model of excellence for the teaching profession."
Details
The Milken Educator Awards, conceived by Lowell Milken to attract, retain and motivate outstanding talent to the teaching profession, is the nation’s preeminent teacher recognition program, dubbed the “Oscars of Teaching” by Teacher Magazine. Since 1987, the Milken Family Foundation, co-founded by Michael and Lowell Milken, has devoted more than $136 million in funding to the Milken Educator Awards, including over $64 million in individual Awards to nearly 2,600 recipients plus powerful professional development opportunities and networking with leading education stakeholders. Up to 40 Milken Educator Awards will be presented in 2013.
New Jersey Milken Educators
New Jersey joined the Milken Educator Awards program in 2002.
21 New Jersey Milken Educator Award recipients
$550,000 cash awards presented to New Jersey Milken Educator Award recipients
More:
Milken Educator Awards Website: www.MilkenEducatorAwards.org
Department of Education Website:http://www.state.nj.us/education/
Jersey City Public Schools Website: http://www.jcboe.org/boe2013/
Milken Family Foundation Website: www.mff.org
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For more information, visit our Media Kit page.
Education reform leader Lowell Milken created the Milken Educator Awards to recognize exemplary teachers and established the National Institute for Excellence in Teaching (NIET) to generate more talented teachers, www.niet.org. NIET operates TAP: The System for Teacher and Student Advancement and the Best Practices Center. Lowell Milken recently provided the founding gift for the UCLA School of Law’s Lowell Milken Institute for Business Law and Policy. For more information about Lowell visit www.lowellmilken.com.