Daniel Chen congratulates Kristen Jennerjohn as Randy Rumery, Director of the Prairie School Foundation, presents the $1,000 award from the Ying Ying Chen Educator IMPACT Fund.

The family of the late Ying Ying Chen announced the establishment of the Ying Ying Chen Educator IMPACT Award in 2021 to honor the memory and distinguished career of Ying at Prairie.  She served as an elementary school Principal and later as a District Administrator.

The award recognizes an educator who embodies Ying’s passion for learning and commitment to students, staff, and colleagues. The recipient of the award receives a $1,000 stipend to support an educational project.

The three finalists for the 2022 IMPACT Award included: Allison Gates a teacher/librarian at Creek; Joint applicants, Kim Heckart and Becky Sorg teachers at Ridge and Kristen Jennerjohn a special education teacher at Hill.

The winner of this year’s award was Kristen Jennerjohn.  Kristen is a Special Education Teacher at Prairie Hill Elementary.  Her students include those who are completely non-speaking, others who struggle to express their thoughts and others who don’t easily understand what is being said.  Kristen plans to use her award to purchase TouchChat with Word Power a Peer to Peer communication system to enhance communication between her students, their teachers and peers.