Jason Raymond, the instructor in Burlington Technical Center’s Digital Media Lab program, has been named Voya’s UnSung Hero for the fourth time! On October 3rd, Superintendent Flanagan took a few minutes to recognize Jason’s great work deeper learning, cross-cultural connections, and anti-racist teaching practices. Congratulations, Jason!
Here are Superintendent Flanagan’s remarks:
“Jason joined our team in 2016 and made an immediate impact. When BHS and BTC were housed together at 52 Institute Road, he worked closely with the BHS leadership team to ensure BHS students were able to access equipment and learning during after-school programming. He also donated equipment to the HMS afterschool program so that they could start their digital media journeys even earlier.
Jason was recently added to the advisory board for the Vermont Production Collective, and he and fellow BTC instructor Ashley Stagner were awarded a $30K BTV Ignite grant for Entrepreneurship in the Arts.
In my conversations with Jason and others, I’ve learned that he wanted to work in BSD specifically so that he could be part of a diverse community representing multiple cultures and languages. He is deeply committed to antiracist teaching practices and to helping shift our teaching practices in BTC and beyond. As a note, I will say, and say this over and over, BTC is the place you see deeper learning happening wherever you go and I think it is a place we can learn from, and I have appreciated his work in this area.
And while all of that is worthy of recognition, it’s not why we are here today. Today I am happy to announce that for the fourth time, Jason Raymond has won the Voya UnSung Heroes Award for 2023.
In 2020, he won the award for his work to create the “Electro Hip Hop” after-school program. This year, he is being recognized for collaborating to develop a microcinema club at the AALV with filmmaker and UVM professor Myles Jewell, filmmaker Ned Castle, and AALV youth coordinator Sam Dingba. He will be working with students to create film projects throughout the year at AALV after school on Tuesdays. This work will be bolstered by an additional $10k grant for the project with Jason received from the Community Foundation for Arts & Social Cohesion, which will allow the team to increase production capabilities and help them to create a process for exhibiting the work within the community, which we cannot wait to see.
Jason, on behalf of the Board and Burlington School District, please allow me to say congratulations on all you have accomplished and thank you, sincerely, for being a part of the BSD team.”
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