Lisa Werner Is America’s Top STEM Teacher

The Air & Space Forces Association (AFA) and Rolls-Royce National Teacher of the Year program recognizes exceptional educators who inspire students through innovative aerospace and STEM education while helping strengthen America’s future workforce. The award celebrates teachers whose creativity, leadership, and community engagement expand opportunities for students and serve as models that can be replicated nationwide.

Few educators embody that mission more completely than Lisa Werner, PreK-8 Music and STEM educator at St. Bruno Parish School in Dousman, Wisconsin.

Teaching Students to Reach for the Stars Through Music and STEM

For the past seven years, Werner has demonstrated that aerospace education belongs in every classroom—even music. By providing rural Wisconsin students with authentic global STEM experiences, she has expanded their horizons far beyond their small-town community and shown that every student can discover a pathway into science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and aerospace. Although music has always been her first passion, Werner recently strengthened her interdisciplinary approach to teaching by earning her Wisconsin licensure in grades 4-8 Earth and Space Science.

Werner has built a nationally recognized program that runs aerospace concepts through music education, on the premise that engineering and the arts draw on the same habits of mind. Through engaging, hands-on learning experiences, students explore coding, engineering design, robotics, sound waves, flight, and space science while developing the collaboration, critical thinking, communication, and problem-solving skills essential for tomorrow’s aerospace and STEM workforce.

“Mrs. Lisa Werner is the teacher who represents the very best our nation has to offer to the world of learning,” said Mary MacDonald, principal of St. Bruno Parish School. “Lisa genuinely has every characteristic of AFA’s national teacher ambassador.”

Drawing on her specialized knowledge, connections, and credentials, Werner has launched school-wide and community-embedded STEM programs: the Ham Radio and STEM Clubs; student mentor learning; distinguished subject matter expert programs; ISS tracking; and the creation of the Innovation Center—a Maker Space where students and the community engage and explore.

Werner’s commitment to authentic learning extends beyond the classroom as well. As a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, Civil Air Patrol aerospace education member, Space Foundation Teacher Liaison, Space for Teachers board member and co-founder, Limitless Space Institute Educator, Fulbright Teachers for Global Classrooms Fellow, and National Geographic Grosvenor Teacher Fellow, Werner brings each of those experiences back into the classroom as something her students can do themselves.

Following her participation in NOAA’s Teacher at Sea program, she connected oceanographic research to music by having students program robots modeled after autonomous underwater vehicles and compose musical codes that mirrored underwater communications. After she returned from a National Geographic expedition to Antarctica, her students analyzed climate data, explored Antarctica through virtual reality, and composed original music inspired by scientific observations while developing community projects that addressed real-world environmental challenges.

Victor Johnson, AFA Wisconsin State President and Billy Mitchell Chapter President, praised her unique ability to teach physics, mathematics, robotics, and aerospace through music, calling her “the epitome of AFA’s national educator award.”

But Werner’s influence extends even beyond Wisconsin. She presents at national aerospace and STEM conferences and works with teachers overseas. As a Fulbright Teachers for Global Classrooms Fellow, she traveled to Senegal, where she shared innovative music and STEM lessons while broadening the global perspectives of both educators and students.

Werner has guided student-designed experiments aboard a Space for Teachers Zero Gravity Flight. Through the engineering design process, her students investigated how sound behaves in microgravity and successfully created a three-dimensional standing sound wave in zero gravity—demonstrating that even elementary and middle school students can engage in authentic scientific research when inspired by exceptional teaching.

Today, Werner serves as a Space for Teachers flight mentor, helping educators nationwide bring similar aerospace experiences to their classrooms. She organized a unique Zero-G flight for educators alongside former NASA astronaut Cady Coleman, enabling teachers to return home with firsthand experiences that ignite curiosity and excitement among their own students. As a Space for Teachers board member, she champions international collaboration, working with educators in four countries to develop student-designed experiments for the organization’s 2026 flight campaign and ensuring these transformative opportunities continue reaching new generations of learners.

Lawrence Sagstetter, AFA North Central Region president, affectionately refers to her as the “Trombonestronaut” after her zero-gravity musical performance and calls her “a unique, perfect fit” for the national award.

Werner’s innovative work has earned numerous state, national, and international honors, including the Henry Ford Innovative Teacher Award, Lowell Mason National Education Advocacy Award, Music for All Advocacy in Action Award, Space Station Explorer Exceptional Educator Award, and the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater Distinguished Alumni Award. Most recently, she received the 2026 Arts Integration and STEAM Educator of the Year Award from the Institute for Arts Integration & STEAM and was selected to speak at TEDx Oconomowoc in October.

Werner recently accepted a new position at WSTEM, a Wisconsin STEM charter school, where she will teach music, band, and orchestra in grades K-7. Because WSTEM builds its culture around interdisciplinary, authentic learning experiences, she hopes to expand her space and STEAM work there.

As the 2026 AFA/Rolls-Royce National Aerospace/STEM Teacher of the Year, Werner will attend the AFA national convention and Air, Space & Cyber Conference, where she will receive a $3,000 prize and the prestigious diamond national AFA Teacher of the Year pin. She will also serve as AFA’s National Teacher Ambassador, representing the Association’s commitment to inspiring young people to pursue careers in air, space, cyber, and STEM while equipping fellow educators with innovative strategies that can be replicated in classrooms across America. Her belief that “STEM education is for everyone” sits at the center of AFA’s mission: connecting education to future opportunities in aerospace and national defense.

The AFA Mary Anne Thompson/Susan Mallett National Aerospace/STEM Teacher of the Year program is proudly sponsored by Rolls-Royce.