Amanda Fox: the Presidential Award, won for a Granger classroom

2020 – 2026 · Prairie Vista Elementary, Granger; then Elsie Rogers; then Moran

The award and its machinery: the Presidential Awards for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching (PAEMST) are the highest honor the United States government bestows on kindergarten-through-twelfth-grade teachers of mathematics and science, computer science included. The White House's own statement dates the program's establishment to 1983 — Notre Dame's news office, in its account of this very award, said 1984, and both print here, the granting record's date governing. The National Science Foundation administers the program for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. The awards alternate by band — kindergarten through sixth grade in one cycle, seventh through twelfth in the next — and the President may name up to 108 teachers in a year, at most two from each state and jurisdiction, one in mathematics and one in science. State panels choose each state's finalists; national panels of mathematicians, scientists and educators assess the applications and recommend to the science office. What a recipient receives is fixed by the program's own statement: a certificate signed by the President, a $10,000 award from the National Science Foundation, and a paid trip to Washington for a series of recognition events and professional development.

The work that was honored: Amanda Fox taught third grade at Prairie Vista Elementary School, 15400 Brick Road, Granger. For four summers running into 2021 she worked with Professor Michael T. Niemier of the University of Notre Dame's Department of Computer Science and Engineering under the university's Computing RET program — Research Experiences for Teachers — funded by the National Science Foundation, devising ways to weave computer-science concepts into the existing STEM curriculum at Prairie Vista and other local elementary schools. She stood in the first cohort of teachers helping kindergarten-through-eighth-grade teachers build age-appropriate computer-science curriculum inside the STEM subjects they already taught; the same NSF grants funded a K-6 Notre Dame computer-science summer program and the after-school coding classes at Prairie Vista, which she expanded; she helped create content for students in other local districts besides her own; and the university's account credits her with mentoring other area teachers, Niemier praising exactly that. She also established a northern Indiana chapter of the Computer Science Teachers Association. That body of work — done in a Granger school, for Granger children and the region's teachers — is what the award honored, and every element of it stands on the university's and the district's records, not on profiles.

The course of the award: Fox was nominated by John Gensic, a Penn High School teacher and past PAEMST national recipient in science, himself a former RET participant who had come back to the program as a workshop assistant. The district's account names a second hand in the nomination: Clare Roach, whom the district describes as its trustee and board secretary, who had come to know Fox as a Prairie Vista parent; Notre Dame's account describes Roach instead as coordinator of the English-as-a-new-language program with the university's Alliance for Catholic Education. The two records are both institutional and both print; they seat the same woman in the two institutions her life touched, and this section does not merge them. In December 2020 Fox was chosen Indiana's only state finalist in mathematics; she and the state's two science finalists were honored in April 2021 at a luncheon in Indianapolis with Indiana Secretary of Education Katie Jenner. By the 2021-22 school year she had moved within the district to Elsie Rogers Elementary, as a fourth-grade teacher. On February 8, 2022, President Biden named the 2020 cohort — 117 teachers, mentors and mentoring organizations across the two presidential programs — and the White House's roster prints Indiana's mathematics line exactly so: "Amanda Fox, Prairie Vista Elementary School, Granger, Indiana (Mathematics)." Indiana's science recipient on the same roster is Sara Hoover of Beiger Elementary School, Mishawaka — the valley's second name that day, and Mishawaka's own, carried in that city's build.

The geography, printed honestly: the district's announcement of February 10, 2022 seats Fox at Elsie Rogers, the school where she then taught; the granting record — the White House roster itself — seats the award at Prairie Vista Elementary School, Granger, Indiana, the school of the work the award was given for. Both print. For this build's ledger the award is Granger's, because the roster says so and because the work was done here; the award found the teacher at a sister school, and the sister school's city does not hold the honor. Mishawaka's own awards file reaches the same verdict from the other side of the line: it prints Amanda Fox as its boundary case, expelled to Granger's page with the reason stated. The two builds agree, each on its own record.

The ceremony: the cohort's Washington recognition was deferred by the pandemic — the district's announcement had carried the contingency of a virtual announcement with a live ceremony to follow — and the National Science Foundation in the end invited all 2019 and 2020 PAEMST awardees to Washington, D.C., where in May 2022 they were recognized during an awards ceremony and a series of events with the science office and the Smithsonian, as the attending states' education departments reported the visit. Fox's own attendance is not separately documented in the records reached; the ceremony stands here at the strength of her cohort's record, and the limit is printed with it.

The second run, and the present seat: the district named Fox its Elementary Teacher of the Year for the 2021-22 school year, and the state's machinery then ran her again: on August 18, 2022 the Indiana Department of Education's selection committee named her a "Top 25" finalist for the 2023 Indiana Teacher of the Year, and on September 2, 2022 the department's Top 10 list carried her name — "Amanda Fox, Penn-Harris-Madison School Corporation" — into the interview day at Indianapolis. The title itself went to Tara Cocanower of the Bluffton-Harrison district, on the department's roll. The course since is administrative: the district's directory, read in November 2026 for the Schools section, seats Amanda Fox as Assistant to the Principal at Moran Elementary in Osceola. Her seats stand in order — Prairie Vista, Granger; Elsie Rogers; Moran — every one of them a Penn-Harris-Madison school; only the first stands on this ground, and it is the one the White House roster names. The dates of her two moves are not fixed by the records reached — the first falls between the April 2021 luncheon record and the district's February 2022 announcement — and stand as a named gap at the end of this section, with the district's directories and board records as the settling source.

Sources:

1. The White House, "President Biden Honors 117 Individuals and Organizations with Highest U.S. Award for Science and Mathematics Teachers and Mentors," February 8, 2022 (the program's establishment in 1983; the alternating bands; the panels' course; NSF's $10,000 and the signed certificate; the Indiana roster line quoted verbatim — Amanda Fox, Prairie Vista Elementary School, Granger, Indiana (Mathematics); Sara Hoover, Beiger Elementary School, Mishawaka (Science)), bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov.
2. Penn-Harris-Madison School Corporation, "PHM Teacher receives U.S. Presidential award for Math Teaching," February 10, 2022 (Fox a fourth-grade teacher at Elsie Rogers at the announcement; the December 2020 finalist choosing, at Prairie Vista; the after-school coding expansion; the NSF-funded Notre Dame work and the K-8 curriculum cohort; the CSTA chapter; Trustee Clare Roach's part in the nomination; the recipients' certificate, trip and $10,000; the COVID contingency; Gensic the district's first recipient, in 2017), phmschools.org.
3. University of Notre Dame News, June 14, 2021, and the Niemier Research Group's companion account (the four summers with Professor Michael Niemier; the computer-science curriculum work at Prairie Vista and other local schools; Fox the only Indiana finalist in mathematics; the April luncheon with Secretary Katie Jenner; the nomination by John Gensic, a past RET participant; Clare Roach described as coordinator of the English-as-a-new-language program with the Alliance for Catholic Education; the program's establishment given there as 1984 — conflict printed in the entry), news.nd.edu and niemierlab.nd.edu.
4. Penn-Harris-Madison School Corporation, "Elsie Rogers teacher chosen as Top 25 Finalist Indiana Teacher of the Year," August 18, 2022 (Fox the district's Elementary Teacher of the Year for the prior school year; the committee's August 18 notice; the Top 10 interview day, September 12, 2022, at CIESC, Indianapolis), phmschools.org.
5. Indiana Department of Education, release of September 2, 2022 (the Top 10 finalists for the 2023 Indiana Teacher of the Year, Amanda Fox of Penn-Harris-Madison among them), in.gov; and the department's roll of past Indiana Teachers of the Year (the 2023 title to Tara Cocanower, Bluffton-Harrison MSD), in.gov.
6. Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, "Wisconsin's PAEMST Awardees Recognized During Visit to D.C.," June 28, 2022 (the National Science Foundation invited all 2019 and 2020 PAEMST awardees to Washington; the May 2022 visit and its awards ceremony), dpi.wi.gov — the cohort-ceremony record.
7. Penn-Harris-Madison School Corporation, school directory, read November 2026 (Moran Elementary — Amanda Fox, Assistant to the Principal), phmschools.org — via the Schools section of this build.
8. The Awards & Honors leg of the Mishawaka build (its boundary-case article: Amanda Fox's award belongs to Granger's page), cross-referenced.