MONUMENT — The Monument School District has an award-winning faculty member.

Michelle Engle, who teaches grade 7-12 language arts, agriculture and middle school science, was recognized by the Rural Schools Collaborative as a fellow of the Celia B. Godsil Grants in Place Program.

Each Celia B. Godsil fellow will be awarded a grant to support a place-based project the educator is working on within their community. Engle will use her grant to help with her cemetery tombstone rescue project, focused on utilizing leadership skills within the community to build strong community partnerships while saving the “sinking” tombstones at three local cemeteries.

Students will research the best ways to reset the headstones, working with the cemetery board and families to implement the updates needed to headstones on the rescue list. The project is something that school leadership has wanted to undertake for a long while, but a lack of funding has been an ongoing issue.

Engle has taught in the Monument School District for over 28 years after earning her teaching degree from Eastern Oregon University in 1992. She was named Outstanding Classroom Teacher for Region 5 in 2009 by the Oregon Science Teachers Association and Oregon Regional Teacher of the Year for 2018-19.

The grants in place program is funded by Celia and Mark Godsil in honor of Celia’s career as a public school teacher and their belief in the importance of classroom teachers to rural communities. Since 2015 the Rural Schools Collaborative and its partners have awarded more than $500,000 to rural classroom teachers in support of innovative place-based projects.

The amount of grant funding awarded to Engle for her project was not disclosed.