April 4, 2006

Congratulations to fifth-grade teacher Henry Henderson who was recently honored with a Tech Valley Innovative Educator Award for the outstanding work he is doing to prepare the region's students for high-tech careers.

"Without the fifth-graders, our technology adventures would not have been as exciting and fun," said Henderson as he accepted the award at a ceremony held at the Duanesburg Elementary School on April 4.

The remark is indicative of the kind of teacher Henderson is, placing the focus back on his students. 

"He is really good with us," said fifth-grade student Lydia Mackie, "he's fun but easy to understand - he's my favorite teacher."

The awards competition, which is sponsored by CDPHP and Collins + Scoville Architects, P.C., and conducted in conjunction with the Summit in Tech Valley, recognizes teachers at the elementary, middle and high school levels in the Tech Valley region who have made extraordinary contributions and brought innovation to the fields of math, science and technology. The winners have an opportunity to either travel to a national professional conference or to purchase up to $1,500 in technology for their classroom.

Described by his colleagues and his students as an extraordinary and innovative educator, Henderson has been teaching fifth grade in the Duanesburg Central School District for more than 33 years. During this time, he has witnessed firsthand the technological explosion that has occurred in the nation and has brought these advances into his classroom.
Henderson skillfully integrates the use of technology in instruction and consistently demonstrates educational excellence with students. He has an exemplary ability to develop and implement innovative instructional activities, and strongly advocated and pioneered the use of laptop computers extensively in the classroom as well as the Smart Board - which he utilizes in his daily instruction to provide a highly interactive, exciting learning environment for students.

Henderson creates exciting science hands-on experiments and projects to assist students to cooperatively learn necessary skills and concepts. Students balance and measure items; create weather instruments; compare and contrast liquids, solid and gas substances; use telescopes and other science instruments as they tackle science problems; and, make hypotheses, collect data, test and make conclusions to further their learning.

He also links students with quality Internet resources so they can further research and collect information on their science studies, and teaches them to create multimedia presentations to effectively demonstrate their knowledge. Using the school's new Smart Boards, Henderson effectively models how students can tackle learning skills and concepts in math units and invites them to show each other how to solve problems. He continually takes risks in applying newly learned skills and applications in the areas of technology, math and science and has an infectious enthusiasm for learning that engages his students.

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