{"id":140329,"date":"2026-03-17T05:22:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-17T05:22:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/140329\/"},"modified":"2026-03-17T05:22:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-17T05:22:10","slug":"philadelphia-teacher-surprised-with-the-5000-heart-of-learning-award","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/140329\/","title":{"rendered":"Philadelphia teacher surprised with the $5,000 Heart of Learning Award"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao MvWXB TjIXL aGjvy ebVHC \">PHILADELPHIA (WPVI) &#8212; A Philadelphia teacher received a huge surprise on Monday for her compassion, commitment and impact on students and families.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">Brittanie Speirs was given Citadel&#8217;s Heart of Learning Award for her dedication to helping students succeed at the Laura W. Waring School in the city&#8217;s Spring Garden neighborhood.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">The award comes with a $5,000 grant.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">Speirs is a special education teacher supporting autistic students in grades 6 through 8.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">She was selected after receiving nearly 50 nominations from colleagues, students and parents.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">The recognition is part of Citadel Credit Union&#8217;s 25th anniversary Heart of Learning Awards program, which will honor 35 educators across Greater Philadelphia in 2026.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC eTIW sUzSN \">This year, Citadel is awarding a record $100,000 in grants, bringing the program&#8217;s total giving to nearly $700,000 over 25 years.<br class=\" \"\/><\/p>\n<p>Copyright \u00a9 2026 WPVI-TV. All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHILADELPHIA (WPVI) &#8212; A Philadelphia teacher received a huge surprise on Monday for her compassion, commitment and impact&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":140330,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[64340,69,71,70],"class_list":{"0":"post-140329","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-64340","9":"tag-philadelphia","10":"tag-philadelphia-headlines","11":"tag-philadelphia-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140329"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140329\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/140330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}