Regan Drew
Riverpoint Academy, Mead School District, Spokane, WA
School of Education graduate Regan Drew has been recognized as an Allen Distinguished Educator, an award in its inaugural year from the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation. Drew, who graduated with a master of arts degree in teaching in 2002, serves as an educator at Riverpoint Academy in the Mead School District in Spokane, where she has led the integration of entrepreneurship into the district’s STEM curriculum.
Riverpoint Academy is a full-time high school within the traditional public school system offering open and flexible learning spaces for students to follow their passions, collaborate with others, and develop innovative problem-solving skills. The Academy focuses on STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering, and math) with complimentary classes in the arts, humanities, and social sciences.
Drew says real-world learning experiences and a “growth mindset” are critical to her students’ confidence and success. “We are continually working with the workforce, learning from other innovative models and teachers out there, and partnering with higher education,” she says. “We will never ‘arrive,’ because our world is changing quickly.”
Thanks to Drew, students at the Academy tap into those changes through budding relationships with professional experts — engineers, biomedical scientists, entrepreneurs — not to mention internships and individualized college guidance.
Drew says the greatest rewards of her job are relationships built with students through “the risks they are taking and the work they are producing.” She remembers the same encouraging community at SPU, pointing particularly to “strong and personalized relationships with intelligent and caring professors.”
Her belief in a real-world approach is also evidence of her time in the School of Education, where she participated in the Alternative Routes to Certification program. “It was ideal for where I was in my life,” she says.
The one-year intensive program allowed her to be in high school classrooms as she was completing coursework, viewing and practicing the techniques she was learning on-site. “Having that long-term, real experience over a longer period of time helped paint a real picture of what life going forward might look like,” she explains. “I’ve been drawn to that approach ever since, and it’s been engrained in the way I’ve gone about teaching.”
As a recipient of the Allen Distinguished Educator award, Drew will receive $25,000 and a year-long fellowship offering an incubator of strategy and network support. She plans to continue infusing entrepreneurship and design thinking into the learning experience of students, and is passionate about communicating the Academy’s passion for learning to her students and the community.
“Raising awareness of how education can look different is a big challenge,” she says. “People want to put us in one of two boxes, traditional or alternative. We are neither.”