Linden Teacher Sang Lee Receives Prestigious Prime Minister’s Award of Teaching Excellence in STEM Program
Sang Moo Lee, 2022 recipient of a prestigious Certificate of Achievement from the Prime Minister’s Awards for Teaching Excellence in STEM Program.
Congratulations Sang Lee! Prime Minister’s Award of Teaching Excellence in STEM Program: Certificate of Achievement Recipient
Sang Lee, who has taught STEM subjects at Linden since 2016, is the most recent Linden faculty member to receive a Certificate of Achievement from the prestigious Prime Minister’s Awards Program. He was honoured for teaching excellence in STEM, and is one of only 18 educators to be recognized this year, selected from a nationwide pool of nominations.
According to his nominator and colleague, Beth Alexander, also a Prime Minister’s Award recipient, “Sang is a passionate and creative educator and an unstoppable advocate for marginalized voices in math, technology, and engineering. He is helping to address the chronic underrepresentation of women in STEM fields, notably in coding.”
You can read the selection committee’s reasons for choosing Sang here; below are some highlights:
Innovative Teaching Approach
Sang has devised highly creative ways to support students' skills development – uniting the love of technology with the psychology of learning.
Making the Conceptual Concrete
Sang’s students hone skills in a highly engaging format. Using his Estore application, they practice financial literacy skills by calculating taxes and discounts in a realistic setting – making a highly conceptual subject like math concrete, and accessible to all.
“Safe Space” Leads to High Enrollment in STEM
Sang ensures that barriers related to “math anxiety” and inexperience don't prevent his students from continuing in STEM beyond the minimum requirements of the Ontario curriculum. Linden consistently sees high enrollment in Grade 11 and 12 STEM electives, and Linden graduates are well represented in post-secondary programs such as engineering, where women are often underrepresented.
Modeling Risk Taking
Sang uses a class "mistake counter" that celebrates the process of stepping out of one's comfort zone and actually awards grades to the process of making attempts to solve different and new problems. He helps build resilience in the face of difficult challenges.
Combining STEM and Creativity
Sang firmly believes that learning to code not only prepares young minds for our increasingly tech-driven world, but also promotes creativity, helps students gain problem-solving skills, and improve their academic performance.
His Students Aim High and Succeed
Sang’s students achieve medals in math contests, gain admission to prestigious universities, win prizes in international hackathons, place highly in international contests combining STEM and art, and use STEM to improve their local communities.
Connecting STEM to Real-World Events
Sang helps students understand not only math but also the importance of numeracy and scientific literacy in shaping world events, and understanding pressing current issues.
"Sang's commitment to connecting science and math education to cultural and social justice issues makes learning especially relevant and engaging for the next generation of students," said Principal Tara Silver.
Congratulations Sang, from all of us at Linden!
Membership in an elite group of tech giants, software and courses were among the prizes that Sang’s student Jazz received for her entry in the Project Tech Hackathon.
Out of 10,000 entrants, Sang’s student Maya placed second in an international contest where students used art and technology to create stunning images.
Sang’s student Kailah talks with Mayor John Tory about her team’s first prize-winning idea for a multilingual app to communicate with TTC riders in all languages.