Twohey: Bartlett police chief named director of Hanover Twp. Emergency Services

• Bartlett Police Chief Dan Palmer was appointed to director of Hanover Township Emergency Services. As director, Palmer will oversee the day-to-day operations of the 21-member volunteer unit that serves the residents of Hanover Township and surrounding communities.

Palmer joins the township with more than 31 years in law enforcement.

The Hanover Township Emergency Services unit is trained to respond to a range of emergencies and nonemergency events to either assist primary emergency responders or operate independently in times of natural and man-made disasters.

• Buffalo Grove resident Dan Woodall studied in Beijing, China, as part of the Lake Forest Beijing Program. Woodall attended Adlai E Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire.

• Six District 15 teachers have earned National Board Certification from the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards.

National Board Certification is an advanced teaching credential achieved upon successful completion of a voluntary assessment program designed to recognize effective and accomplished teachers who meet high standards based on what teachers should know and be able to do.

Earning National Board Certification are: Rita Chavez, a first-grade bilingual teacher at Lake Louise School; Brooke Nyquist, a first-grade bilingual teacher at Lake Louise School; Lauren Lukowski, a first-grade bilingual teacher at Gray M. Sanborn School; Grace Rios, a second-grade bilingual teacher at Gray M. Sanborn School; Susan Esbrook, a fourth-grade teacher at Gray M. Sanborn School; and Laura Turek, a seventh-grade science teacher at Walter R. Sundling Junior High.

• Maine East Social Science teachers Debra Spiegel and Chris Peters received the Beveridge Family Teaching Prize from the American Historical Association.

The prize recognizes excellence and innovation in elementary, middle school and secondary history teaching. Peters and Spiegel won the award for their efforts to promote reading in their United States History classes by developing lessons and units in which students read short stories and novels that illuminated events of the American experience.

In recognition of their innovative work in promoting reading with U.S. History content, Spiegel and Peters won a cash award of $1,500, which will be used to benefit the teaching of students at Maine East.

• An article titled “Materials World Modules: A View from the Science Classroom,” written by Schaumburg High School science teacher Ken Turner, was published in the most recent Journal of Materials Education (Volume 32).

Turner's article describes the experiences of a high school science teacher who was an early collaborator in the Materials World Modules program.

He looks back over many years and reflects on his increased use of MWM, discussing ways in which his classroom teaching style has changed for the better, ways in which his students have learned to produce design projects with increased sophistication and ways in which he has become an active participant in making science education a more exciting and rewarding field.

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