Holy Family Graduate and Alumni Association Board Member Meghan Rakus ’19, M’22 Hatches Award-Winning Lesson; Grows Love of Learning
At 11 p.m. on a spring evening in 2023, the teacher app on Meghan Rakus’ (’19, M’22) phone started receiving messages. “The chicks are hatching!” Parents of the Holy Family University graduate’s first-grade students at Saint Mary Interparochial School (SMIPS), a 2023 and 2016 National Blue-Ribbon School of Excellence located in the historic district of Philadelphia, were reaching out with the same excitement as their six-year-old children. Thanks to a livestream set up as a way to engage families, parents were able to share in the school’s annual egg hatching science lesson, which Rakus has bolstered over the last five years. The lesson, in fact, recently earned the Northeast Philadelphia native recognition as one of five “outstanding teachers honored for their innovation, creativity, and commitment to the students they serve” by FACTS, a Nelnet school management company. Rakus’ distinction, from among more than 100 applicants nationwide, included a $5,000 honorarium, a $1,000 donation to SMIPS, and a free trip to the Elevate 2024 conference in Atlanta, Ga., in June 2024, where she will present her innovative concept to the FACTS community.