Voya Financial Honors Jamaica Plain Teacher with $2,000 Grant for Innovative Program

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Tasha Greenwood, a teacher at Meridian Academy in Jamaica Plain, has received a $2,000 grant as part of the Voya Unsung Heroes initiative.

Tasha Greenwood, a teacher at Meridian Academy in Jamaica Plain, has received a $2,000 grant as part of the Voya Unsung Heroes initiative.

“Our Unsung Heroes program continues to recognize teachers who go above and beyond to inspire today’s students in the classroom,” said Heather Lavallee, president of Tax-Exempt Markets at Voya Financial. “We are proud to honor teachers like Tasha Greenwood whose inspiring program is making a difference in the lives of young people. This commitment and passion for teaching closely aligns with our focus at Voya on helping all Americans prepare for their unique financial futures.”

Greenwood’s innovative teaching idea, “Ocean Drifters,” focuses on enabling students to become the ocean scientists that they have read about, building and deploying their own oceanographic instruments. Students involved in the project will learn about ocean circulation and modeling via flotsam and jetsam and ultimately deploy marine drifters that are equipped with GPS. Through a series of labs and explorations, students will focus on physical oceanography. They will develop engineering skills and propose research questions using the transmitter’s data. Students will also have an opportunity to form connections by talking about data collection with local scientists.

With the support of the Voya grant for this program, students will also have the opportunity to engage in the project with a nearby school that sent out a drifter from an east coast location.

Selected from a group of more than 1,200 applicants, Greenwood is one of only 100 winners across the country who will receive this award to help fund and bring her program to life. In addition, she will now compete with other finalists for one of the top three prizes — an additional $5,000, $10,000 or $25,000 from Voya Financial.

Since 1996, the Voya Unsung Heroes initiative has awarded more than $5 million to help the nation’s educators fund creative teaching ideas Voya Financial, Inc. is a publicly traded company, and a provider of workplace retirement solutions, including savings plans for K-12 educators.

Through the Voya Unsung Heroes program, Voya Financial awards grants to K-12 educators nationwide to honor their innovative teaching methods, creative educational projects, and ability to positively influence their students. For more than 20 years, the program has awarded over $5 million in grants to more than 2,000 educators across the United States.

To learn more about this year’s winning projects, as well as those from previous years, visit theUnsung Heroes website at Voya.com/UnsungHeroes. Applications for the 2019 Voya Unsung Heroes awards are currently being accepted through the website until April 30, 2019.

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