Heather O’Hara

O’Hara’s innovative teaching idea, “Newcomers & New Technology,” aims to connect the Newcomer students with hands-on virtual reality technology through the Inspirit curriculum. Newcomer International Center is a high school for 14-17-year-olds who have been in the country less than one calendar year and are learning English. This curriculum will help students apply their education to everyday learning and real-life experiences. Because visual technology often transcends language and culture, the goal is to incorporate virtual reality headsets into the classroom experience to help students see, touch and connect with what they are learning about, rather than simply learning abstractly. With the implementation of this curriculum, the school will be able to give virtual experiences in various areas, such as the introduction to construction, introduction to aviation, biology dissections, soft skills training and even social emotional learning through the mindful 360 tours that the Inspirit virtual reality curriculum offers. The Voya grant will be used to purchase three Meta Quest VR headsets.