The Soulsville Charter School announced today that its physics instructor, Jack Replinger, is the recipient of Teach For America’s (TFA) second annual Barbara Rosser Hyde Alumni Leadership Award, a $5,000 board funded award to recognize outstanding leadership among TFA alumni in Memphis.
The award was announced and presented at TFA’s Grits and GRIND all-alumni brunch on Saturday, November 3, 2018 at the Halloran Centre.
Applicants included teachers, school leaders, social innovators, and coaches, and more. The region’s alumni leadership team, a diverse cross-functional group of eight staff members at every leadership level, narrowed down applicants to six finalists.
According to Teach For America Memphis Executive Director Athena Palmer, “The Barbara Rosser Hyde Alumni Leadership Award was established to honor an alumna/alumnus in Memphis who does innovative work to disrupt systems of inequality in Memphis. The award celebrates profound acts of leadership that ensure we are making progress to “One Day” for the students and communities we serve and that our students are globally competitive, socially aware, and have access to opportunities that develop their leadership potential. This year’s applications beautifully represent what leadership can look like at all levels in our city.”
Replinger, who joined The Soulsville Charter School in 2010, has been teaching in Memphis for 12 years and is one of Teach For America Memphis’s longest-serving classroom teachers. He first taught at Kingsbury High School, where he was the first teacher to have students pass an AP science exam. In 2015 he was named a Tennessee Charter School Teacher Of The Year and created https://www.positivephysics.org/, a physics-learning platform specifically designed to ensure equitable access to physics instruction for students from any background or previous science exposure. Over 6,000 students in 500 schools now use this platform across 34 countries.
Replinger says he will use the award to continue to develop positivephysics.org and help pay the tuition of a former student overcoming especially difficult circumstances to complete an engineering degree.
Click to see Teach for America video about Jack Replinger:
For more information about Teach for America – Memphis and their growing alumni network, please contact Jeff Hulett at jeff@keypublicstrategies.com.
