NEW ROCHELLE, NY — New Rochelle High School economics teacher Darren Gurney was one of three economics educators in the New York metropolitan area selected to receive the Alfred P. Sloan Teaching Champion Award from Council for Economic Education.
Gurney has 18 years of teaching experience. He is the 12th Grade Economics Teacher of Economics and AP Macroeconomics at New Rochelle High School in New Rochelle, NY.
The Award is presented to educators who have shown excellence and innovative teaching methods in their classrooms. The award aims to promote economic and financial education at the K‐12 level by recognizing teachers who effectively deliver this important content in their classrooms and achieve results.
Darren Gurney began teaching social studies at New Rochelle High School in 1996. He has been teaching AP Macroeconomics since 2007 and a one semester Economics course since 2000. Gurney founded the NRHS Economics Team which has finished in the top five annually in CEE’s New York State Economics Challenge for the past eight years (2nd place finish in 2014).
Mr. Gurney attended Washington University in St. Louis where he played baseball and majored in history before earning a Masters in Social Studies Education at Teachers College of Columbia University. NASDAQ selected Gurney for national semi-finalist in 2004 as one of the “Top 12 economics educators in the USA”. CNBC and The New York Times have visited his classroom to run feature stories on his students and their investment endeavors. Jim Cramer invited ten of Gurney’s students and their families to be part of his “Mad Money Father’s Day Show” in 2007.
In 2011, Coaches Choice published Covering All the Bases, a 298 page instructional baseball book, which Gurney penned about proper baseball fundamentals and mechanics. Gurney has coached high school and NCAA baseball for the past 22 years and is also the founder/director of Rising Star Baseball Camp, the largest baseball camp in Westchester County.
“By providing a comprehensive economic education to my students, I aspire to empower them to make effective choices as adults when spending money, using credit cards, managing investments, setting up retirement accounts, pinpointing competitive mortgage rates, negotiating with car dealers, understanding how monetary and fiscal policy affect their daily lives, and a multitude of other financial decisions. My passion for inspiring teenagers to become financially literate helps foster a more prosperous economic future for our nation and its citizenry.”
The other two educators selected for the Alfred P. Sloan Teaching Champion Awards were Kathleen O’Hagan and Amanda Tombari.
O’Hagan is a Fourth Grade Teacher of Language Arts, Math, Social Studies and Science at P.S. 97/The Highlawn School in Brooklyn, NY. Tombari is a 12th Grade Teacher of Economics (Intensive, Regents, Honors, AP) at Clarkstown South High School in West Nyack, NY.
The Alfred P. Sloan Teaching Champion Award is presented to economics educators in the New York metropolitan area who have shown excellence and innovative teaching methods in their classrooms. The award aims to promote economic and financial education at the K‐12 level by recognizing teachers who effectively deliver this important content in their classrooms and achieve results.