Natasha Craft, Project Lead The Way Launch teacher at Pulaski Elementary School (Pulaski County), is presented with the award for Project Lead The Way Launch Instructor of the Year by Mark Harrell, director of school engagement, Midwest Region, Kentucky and Tennessee, and Doug Klein, University of Kentucky affiliate director, Project Lead The Way. Photo submitted

Natasha Craft, Project Lead The Way Launch teacher at Pulaski Elementary School (Pulaski County), is presented with the award for Project Lead The Way Launch Instructor of the Year by Mark Harrell, director of school engagement, Midwest Region, Kentucky and Tennessee, and Doug Klein, University of Kentucky affiliate director, Project Lead The Way.
Photo submitted

Natasha Craft, the Project Lead The Way (PLTW) Launch teacher at Pulaski Elementary School (Pulaski County), has been named the Kentucky Project Lead The Way Launch Instructor of the Year. PLTW Launch is a program for students in grades K-5 that introduces them to STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) concepts through problem-solving and critical thinking.

Craft instructs all 635 students at Pulaski Elementary on a five-week rotation. She also was selected by a national PLTW team as Kentucky’s first Master Project Lead The Way Instructor, attending national-level training and becoming the lead instructor for elementary teachers from across Kentucky at PLTW Launch core training last summer.

“Her long-standing science, technology, engineering and math leadership roles positioned her, along with two other district elementary instructors last year, to implement the first-ever Project Lead The Way Launch curriculum in our district and in our entire region, and one school district of only 15 in the state,” Pulaski County Superintendent Steve Butcher said.

Craft has also led the way with other elementary instructors in the Pulaski County district in vertical and cross-district capacity building of Kentucky’s Next-Generation Science Standards.