It is an honor to be acknowledged for my life’s passion with a Presidential Award. Beyond their parents, children need someone to listen to them and to treat them with respect, and show them doors that they can open and walk through as they get older. As a teacher, I am proud that I have been able to be that someone. This most prestigious award will provide opportunities to work with educators and policymakers to effect positive change in education.

Lorie Hammerstrom Quincy, MA | K-6, Science, 2016

The official biography below was current at the time of the award.

Lorie Hammerstrom has been an educator for more than 32 years in the Quincy Public School District. She has spent the last seven years teaching fourth and fifth grade science at Merrymount Elementary School. In 2011, Lorie won a scholarship to attend Space Academy for Teachers in Huntsville, Alabama. In 2012, she was awarded a second scholarship to attend the Advanced Space Academy for Teachers. She has developed an ongoing afterschool Space Camp for students, which includes STEM projects and visits by NASA astronauts. Lorie’s students experience many enrichment activities. These include the NASA Distance Learning Network, Train Like An Astronaut, and a rocket engineering design challenge. In 2017, Lorie was invited to Space Center Houston, where she and other science teachers experienced authentic survival training in the Neutral Buoyancy Lab, which astronauts use to prepare for living and working in space. The teachers developed lessons promoting teamwork, problem solving, communication, and engineering. The lessons were designed to develop and improve critical thinking skills, fiscal responsibility, creativity, and the drive to be successful. Lorie earned a B.S., summa cum laude, in education and a M.Ed. from Eastern Nazarene College in Quincy, MA. She is a certified elementary and middle school teacher.

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