Category Archives: Education

NY teacher Kemeisha Barrett garners 2023-2024 Big Apple Award

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Math teacher Kemeisha Barrett of Brooklyn, New York, has garnered a 2023-2024 Big Apple Award. Photo credit: Ebbetts Field Middle School

The city of New York is very proud of their public school teachers. In fact, city leaders regularly honor exceptional educators with their annual Big Apple Awards. For the 2023-2024 school year, one of these exceptional educators was Kemeisha Barrett, a middle school mathematics teacher at Ebbets Field Middle School in Brooklyn.

Kemeisha says her goal as an educator is to equip her seventh and eighth grade students with the tools they need to become problem-solvers and independent learners. “Math is often seen as a challenging subject, but I believe all students are capable of being successful with math,” she declares. “Students respond well when they are able to make connections between their academic encounters and cultural backgrounds. As such, I have challenged myself to establish a culturally responsive classroom environment for ALL of my students,” she continues.

The school where Kemeisha teaches is as special as the honored teacher. Ebbets Field Middle School is an education center founded in 2005 and located on the Jackie Robinson campus, the original home of the Brooklyn Dodgers. A large number of students who attend the school are immigrants or the children of immigrants. The learners who attend the school form a small community where every teacher knows every student and every student has plenty of opportunities to form and maintain strong friendships with other students.

This year, the Big Apple Awards were presented to 49 superlative New York City teachers. Each one was nominated by their principal for work in the profession that inspires students, models great teaching, and enriches school communities. The recipients were chosen through a rigorous selection process that includes community nominations, principal recommendations, classroom visits, an interview, and a review by a board of judges. To learn more about the program and this year’s recipients, click on this link to Big Apple Awards.

Beloved music teacher George Andrus inspires Hawaiian singing competition

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There are times when a particularly special educator inspires students long after he or she no longer walks this earth. One of was George Alanson Andrus, a beloved music teacher who taught in the Hawaiian islands during the early part of the 20th century. Even though he lived a century ago, George became the inspiration for a singing competition that still takes place annually at Hawaii’s Kamehameha School. The Kamehameha School is a privately-funded high school originally founded to provide quality education for Native Hawaiian students. Many consider the institution to be one of the most prestigious schools in the Hawaiian islands.

When George suddenly collapsed and died on May 26, 1921, the principal and faculty of the school wanted to honor the popular teacher. To do so, they hastily organized an impromptu choral competition between the classes that very same day. They held that first competition in the dark on the steps of the campus’s Bishop Museum, illuminated only by the headlights of automobiles aimed at the contestants. The following year, the Kamehameha School for Girls staged their first annual song contest.

In the early days of the contest, each class sang the school’s alma mater, “Sons of Hawaii,” followed by a Hawaiian composition, and culminating with an original song in Hawaiian composed by members of the class. In 1968, the competition was televised for the first time, live, with a simulcast on radio. Today, the event is still highly anticipated, and, like the very first competition, many of the song selections are still delivered a cappella.

To view a performance from this year’s song competition, watch the YouTube video below. To learn more about the Kamehameha Schools, visit their website at www.ksbe.edu.

Craig Rowe named a finalist for CA State 2023 Teacher of the Year

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High school English teacher Craig Rowe of Truckee, California, has been named one of his state’s finalists for 2023 Teacher of the Year. Photo credit: Truckee High School

Many exceptional educators have been recognized for their work in the classroom this year. One of these is Craig Rowe, a high school English teacher from Placer County, California. He has been named one of nine finalists for California’s 2023 Teacher of the Year.

Craig teaches at Truckee High School in the Tahoe Truckee Unified School District. He also serves as the Model United Nations Advisor for his school. The honored educator says he is passionate about diversity students having an equal chance to attend the college of their dreams. To facilitate this, he formed La Fuerza Latina, a small college prep admissions program for his Truckee High students. The goal of the program is to raise the collegiate bar for students from multi-ethnic backgrounds, and to provide the kind of high-caliber admissions preparation paid consultants provide. In this way, Craig says, diversity students have the opportunity to compete at the highest level nationally, to earn scholarships, and to reach their potential.

Craig has his own childhood experiences to thank for his passion to help disadvantaged students. As a young man, he says, he never saw himself becoming a teacher. The son of a Hispanic mother and a White father, neither of whom attended college, Craig remembers school as a place fraught with racial tension and frequent fights. As a young man, he recalls fellow students speaking negatively about his ethnic heritage, which caused him a great deal of shame and anger. “This was before multiculturalism was a thing,” Craig remembers. “School was definitely not a respite.”

Despite his inauspicious performance in high school academics, Craig went on to earn his Bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Washington. He earned his Master’s degree in Dramatic Literature from the University of California, Santa Barbara. And he completed the requirements for his Ph.D. in Performance Studies from University of California, Berkeley. While there, he garnered a Regents Fellowship. In addition, Craig worked in a Chicana writing program at Stanford University.

“I want every student to know that regardless of their social or ethnic status, if they are hard-working and diligent, they can compete at the very highest level nationally,” asserts Craig. “My intent is simply to supplement our outstanding counseling support system, so our students have equal advantages for being placed in highly competitive colleges and universities as well as earn scholarships,” he concludes.

Sarah Morgan earns 2023 Golden Apple Teacher of Distinction Award

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Special Education teacher Sarah Morgan of Pulaski, Wisconsin, has earned a 2023 Golden Apple Teacher of Distinction Award. Photo credit: Pulasii Community Middle School

It takes a very special person to be a Special Education teacher. One of these is Sarah Morgan, who teaches at Pulaski Community Middle School in Pulaski, Wisconsin. She is so masterly at her work, she is a recipient of a 2023 Golden Apple Teacher of Distinction Award!

The Golden Apple program annually recognizes high-quality educators in Greater Green Bay. This year, eight recipients, including Sarah, were selected for their excellence in innovation, professionalism, and leadership.

Sarah certainly meets the criteria for her award. In her classroom, she utilizes functional life skills activities with sixth, seventh, and eighth grade students that have been diagnosed with intellectual disabilities and autism. To do this, she incorporates high expectations to ensure students are successful and behavior modification techniques to decrease less desirable behaviors.

One of Sarah’s classroom projects involves operating the Red Raider Restaurant one day each month at her school. Under her leadership, the students plan, cook, serve, and deliver lunch to students and staff. The objective of the program is to create pre-vocational skills that will ultimately lead to future employment opportunities. “Our overarching goal for students with disabilities is to become as independent as possible past their post-high school life,” Sarah explains, “so we want to start those experiences early and often so they can find success and find things that they enjoy and things that they’re good at,” she continues.

In addition to her work with students, Sarah serves as a Program Support Teacher for Cognitive/Intellectual Disabilities at the Wisconsin Department Instruction, where she represents the Pulaski Community School District. She is also a trainer of teachers for the Common Core Essential Elements.

Sarah’s Golden Apple Award, bestowed by the Greater Green Bay Chapter, is not the only recognition she has earned. She garnered the N2Y Kids at the Heart Award in 2014, and the Wisconsin Council for Exceptional Children Excellence named her their Beginning Teacher of the Year in September of 2000.

Sarah earned her Bachelor’s degree in Special Education from the University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire. She earned her Master’s degree in School Counseling from Lakeland College. Her career as an educator spans 24 years.

 

Idaho educator Stephanie Archuleta serves as Latina role model

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Former Idaho middle school teacher Stephanie Archuleta serves as a Latina role model for diverse students on her campus. Photo credit: Caldwell School District

There are many fine educators who serve as role models for diverse groups of students in our schools. One of these is Stephanie Archuleta, a middle school educator of Latina ethnicity who hails from Caldwell, Idaho.

The Latino student population in the state is rising, while the number of Latino or nonwhite teachers remains stagnant, report school officials report. In the Idaho’s ten school districts with the highest percentage of Latino students, 90% of the teachers are white.

That’s where Latino teachers such as Stephanie play an important part in serving as exemplary role models. She spent 13 years as a classroom teacher, and for the past three years she has worked as an administrator. She is employed at Syringa Middle School, a public school in the Caldwell School District.

When Stephanie Archuleta reflects on her journey to becoming a teacher, she remembers with fondness her sixth-grade teacher, Mrs. Kathi Lamm. “Because she believed in me, I began to believe in myself,” asserts Stephanie. “She pushed me to excel, and even when I struggled, she was there to mentor me through the hardships. When I decided to become a teacher, it was because I wanted to be a Mrs. Lamm for those that need someone to lean on and believe in them,” says Stephanie.

Stephanie harbors a strong belief in the need for public schools to recruit and develop more Latino teachers. “Students are more motivated and apt to learn when the person leading the classroom and/or school looks like them, has the same perspectives as them and the same framework of knowledge as them,” she asserts. “I want to show my students there is a place for us in history and in the future,” she concludes.

Stephanie earned her Bachelor’s degree in Music from Corpus Christi University in 2003. She completed the requirements for her teaching credential from The College of Idaho in 2007. She earned her Master’s degree in Educational Leadership and Administration from Walden University in 2015.