Plymouth High School English/Language Arts teacher Josh Dingeldein was awarded with the Milken Educator Award which comes with a prize of $25,000 from the Milken Family Foundation.
Milken Educator Awards Senior Vice President Dr. Jane Foley and Indiana Secretary of Education Dr. Katie Jenner presented the award to Dingeldein at the school Thursday morning.
According to the Indiana Department of Education, a data-driven educator, Josh Dingeldein’s calculated instructional strategies help his 9th and 11th grade students navigate rigorous curriculum, while encouraging productive classroom collaboration and discourse. He presents students with questions and feedback as they work through standards-based lessons in narrative, dialogue and thesis statement writing, as well as rhetorical analysis and researched blog projects. Students learn how to analyze text and cite evidence, while those in need of extra support benefit from differentiated instruction in small group sessions.
Students in Dingeldein’s Advanced Placement (AP) English Language and Composition course outperformed the state and global average of students scoring a three or higher on the AP test. In 2022-2023, 54% of Plymouth High School students outperformed the state and met the benchmark on the SAT’s Evidence-Based Reading and Writing section.
The Milken Educator Award is not a lifetime achievement honor. Recipients are heralded in early to mid-career for what they have achieved — and for the promise of what they will accomplish given the resources and opportunities earned from the award.
Dingeldein earned a Bachelor of Science in Secondary English Education from Taylor University in 2015.
