The First Lady of Hawaii joined National Life this week at the final surprise pop-up awards ceremony for one of our LifeChanger of the Year grand prize finalists.
Lori Kwee is a fourth-grade teacher at Ala Wai Elementary School in Honolulu where she has been teaching for the past 31 years.
She was recognized for adopting a new teaching method in her class last year. She challenged her students at the start of the year to think on their own about an issue important to them. They eventually discovered the plight of the critically endangered Vaquita porpoise in the Gulf of California.
They chose to take action, writing research reports, poems, creative stories, letters to policy makers, along with creating posters and other artwork and posting on social media. Along the way, their writing, grammar and vocabulary improved along with test scores. One of their projects involved selling vegetables from the school garden to raise $400 toward the Vaquita Porpoise Project.
For that work, Lori was chosen as one of this year’s LifeChanger of the Year grand prize finalists. She’s guaranteed to win at least a $5,000 prize, to be split with her school, and is in the running for the $10,000 top prize.
National Life organized a surprise announcement at Lori’s school to announce her prize. And many top officials from Hawaii government attended, including First Lady Dawn Amano-Ige.
“Thank you to National Life Group for recognizing all the teachers throughout our country,” the First Lady said at the ceremony. “It is something we need so much of and thank you for doing that.”
In addition, several state representatives attended and so did leaders from the Hawaii Public Schools.
Mallorie Manosh made the presentation on behalf of National Life along with Tru Tran, an agent from Premier Financial Alliance.
The grand prize winner will be announced at Conference of Champions a little more than a month from now in Kauai, an island neighboring Oahu where Lori teaches.
Photo at top: Ala Wai Elementary Principal Michelle DeBusca, left, and Hawaii First Lady Dawn Amano-Ige, right, congratulate Lori Kwee.