EESA Award Winners

Steven Gregor, Inspirational Teacher Award Winner

Steven Gregor is a 9th Grade English Language Arts and TV Broadcasting teacher at West Seneca West Senior High School. He began his teaching career in the West Seneca Central School District in 2011 and has been part of the West Senior community since the 2019–2020 school year.

In addition to teaching English and TV Broadcasting, Steven co-advises West Senior’s Project LIT book club, which champions student literacy, uplifts underrepresented voices, and builds community.

A passionate educator and curriculum innovator, Steven has helped modernize the 9th grade English program by integrating contemporary texts and fresh approaches. His work includes redesigning a unit analyzing Of Mice and Men through various critical lenses and co-developing a dynamic new unit on the novel-in-verse Punching the Air. His teaching philosophy centers on amplifying student voice, promoting critical thinking, and creating meaningful, authentic learning experiences.

Steven holds a Bachelor of Arts in English from the University at Buffalo and a Master’s degree in Adolescent Education from Canisius College, specializing in English Language Arts for grades 7–12.

Outside the classroom, Steven loves traveling the world with his wife, Christina, and spending time with their daughter, Nora. A lifelong Buffalo Bills fan, he’s still holding out hope that this will finally be the year they bring home the Lombardi Trophy.

Dr. William-O'Neil-White, Alumni Award Winner

William O’Neil-White is an assistant professor at the Warner School of Education and Human Development at the University of Rochester. For eight years, he taught high school English in the Buffalo Public Schools, specializing in International Baccalaureate Language and Literature courses and pioneering the school’s first African American Studies curriculum. His teaching centered on creating spaces for civic discourse, critical literacies, and joy for urban youth.

Noah Falck, Community Award Winner

Noah Falck is the author of Exclusions a finalist for the 2020 Believer Book Award for Poetry. His co-authored collection Prerecorded Weather won the 2022 James Tate Poetry Prize. He edited the anthologies Ten Years of Poems in Grain Silos and My Next Heart: New Buffalo Poetry. His poetry has appeared in the Kenyon Review, Literary Hub, Poetry Daily, Poets.org, Poetry Northwest, and anthologized in Poem-A-Day 365 Poems for Every Occasion. For ten years, he taught reading and writing to elementary students in the public schools of Cincinnati and Dayton, Ohio. In 2013, he founded the Silo City Reading Series, a multimedia poetry event series that takes place inside a 120-foot-high, 100-year-old abandoned grain elevator. He lives in Buffalo, New York.