Arthur, Westside teachers to receive Christa McAuliffe Prizes from UNL

Lynn Channer of Arthur County Schools in Arthur and Rhonda Josten of Westside Community Schools in Omaha have been selected as this year's winners of the Christa McAuliffe Prizes for Courage and Excellence in Education by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's College of Education and Human Sciences.

The McAuliffe Prize was created in 1987 to honor the first teacher-astronaut, Christa McAuliffe of Concord, N.H. McAuliffe was killed in the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger on Jan. 28, 1986. Recipients of the prize are teachers who exemplify the character of McAuliffe -- teachers who hold high standards of excellence for themselves and their students; teachers who demonstrate courage, commitment, creativity, and ability to inspire.

Channer and Josten will be honored at a March 7 luncheon at the Nebraska East Union in conjunction with an induction ceremony for UNL students entering Pi Lambda Theta, the international honor society in education. Each will receive a special plaque and a $1,000 prize. Each of their schools will receive a $500 stipend.

A high school social studies teacher, Channer has taught in the Arthur County Schools for more than 20 years and has created what her principal, Scott Trimble, calls one of the most creative classrooms the school has ever seen. Her students are engaged in projects and activities that stretch their minds and challenge them to "think outside the box," Trimble said. Evidence of her effectiveness is that students in her economics courses won the state Stock Market Game competition in 1998 and 2009, despite the fact that Arthur is one of the smallest schools in the state.

Channer earned her bachelor's degree at Kearney State College (now the University of Nebraska at Kearney) and a master's degree in economics at UNL. She received an Outstanding Teacher Award from the Nebraska Council on Economic Education in 2002.

Josten has been the K-6 special education teacher at Rockbrook Elementary School since 1992 and has served as autism specialist for Westside Community Schools since 2007. She is credited with working hard to get to know her students on a personal level, building connections with them that enable her to create individualized educational programs that maximize each child's potential. Her overarching goal is to increase her students' independent skills in all areas of development: academic, social, emotional and behavioral. Her success has led to well-received creative workshops that she conducts for other teachers. As a result of her expertise in working with students in the autism spectrum and their families, she added the title of autism specialist and consults with teachers across the district in designing programs for students with autism.

Josten earned her bachelor's degree in elementary education from UNL (1981) and earned two master of science degrees at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, in teaching the mentally retarded (1994) and elementary guidance counseling (2007). She received the H. Vaughn Phelps Excellence in Education Award from the Westside Community Schools Foundation in 2001 and the Friend of Autism Award from the State of Nebraska Autism Spectrum Disorders Network in 2008, and was a Nebraska Teacher of the Year nominee in 2009.

For more information on the Christa McAuliffe prize, visit http://courage.unl.edu.