Lilly Endowment Incorporated awarded Mayflower Mill Elementary School teacher Gina Boyd with a Lilly Endowment Teacher Creativity Fellowship. She is among 100 Indiana teachers who will have a chance to nurture their own curiosity and development through a $12,000 grant.

Boyd, a high ability teacher, will travel to London to take a children’s book writing course and research King George III.

Boyd says this is an opportunity to explore her fascination with all things British. “I want to indulge my love of all that is British, learn to write in a way that interests children and gain a perspective on King George III from his own side of the Atlantic,” says Boyd. “I want to visit the places he lived and traveled, see the artifacts he collected and commissioned and try to get a sense of him as a real person instead of just a faraway despot vilified in US history books.”

Boyd hopes to develop her writing skills and develop a project that will help her students learn to think about things that don’t often get questioned.