Kindergarten teacher Amber Nichols named WV’s 2023 Teacher of the Year

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Kindergarten teacher Amber Nichols has been named West Virginia’s 2023 Teacher of the Year. Photo Credit: Marshall University

It is always my pleasure to shine a spotlight on outstanding educators who have earned accolades for their work in the profession. One of these is Amber Nichols, a kindergarten teacher from Morgantown, West Virginia. She has been named her state’s 2023 Teacher of the Year.

Amber earned her Bachelor’s degree in Mass Communications from Shepherd University in Shepherdsontown, West Virginia, in 2001. She earned her Master’s degree in Education from West Virginia University.

In a career that spans 21 years, the honored educator, who is a military wife, has taught in Arizona and Pennsylvania in addition to her current stint in West Virginia. She now teaches at Eastwood Elementary School in the Monongalia County School District in Morgantown.

In her classroom, Amber strives to create an environment in which all students feel safe, loved and appreciated. She says her teaching mantra is, “We are here for the kids, and we have each other.” Social and emotional development and academic achievement are the rigorous goals she sets for each child in her class. Amber also has background in teaching special education. In fact, she is a strong advocate for students with disabilities, especially those with medical differences. It is her distinct belief that, with the appropriate supports, all students can.

“I am passionate about teaching because it creates an opportunity to impact lives in a way no other profession can,” Amber declares. “My goal is to always foster a creative, inviting and welcoming atmosphere in my classroom that makes every student feel valued and pushes them to be their very best every day,” she continues.

In addition to her work with young students, Amber is an active member of her school’s leadership and curriculum teams. She is also a behavior intervention team member, a mentor teacher, and a co-operating teacher for both interns at West Virginia University and high school students at Monongalia County Technical Education Center.

As her state’s Teacher of the Year, Amber will receive a vehicle from Toyota Motor Manufacturing of West Virginia to use for the year; $5,000 from both Highmark West Virginia and the Horace Mann Companies; a $1,000 classroom grant from the West Virginia Education Association; a two-night stay at Tygart Lake State Park; a $250 Amazon gift card from West Virginia Professional Educators; and $500 from the American Federation of Teachers, West Virginia.

To read more about Amber, click on this link to a podcast by Leaders of Literacy containing the transcript of an interview with her.

Louise Archer taught in a segregated, rural one-room schoolhouse

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North Carolina teacher Louise Archer taught core academic subjects and life skills in a segregated rural one-room schoolhouse. Photo Credit: Louise Archer Elementary School

Our nation’s students are indeed fortunate to have so many dedicated and hardworking educators teaching in our public schools. One of these was Louise Archer, an elementary school teacher from North Carolina.

Louise was born on Oct. 23, 1893, in Fayetteville, North Carolina. As a young woman, she attended Livingston College, a historically Black Christian college located in Salisbury, North Carolina. She married Romulus Archer, Jr., in 1915. The couple relocated to Washington, DC, in 1922, and Louise continued her education at Morgan State College, a historically Black college in nearby Baltimore, Maryland. There she earned her Bachelor’s degree.

Louise inaugurated her career as an educator at the Oak Grove School in Southampton, Virginia, in a one-room schoolhouse for African American children. She taught there two years. In 1924, she became both the teacher and the principal for another one-room segregated school, the Vienna Colored School, located in Vienna, Virginia. The camped, unheated facility was the first in Fairfax County to educate African American students in fifth through seventh grades. For many, this was the only education they would receive.

The first boys who were the first to arrive at the rural school each morning chopped wood for the fire to keep the schoolhouse warm. Students brought water each day from a nearby spring and stored it in buckets in one corner of the classroom. Louise taught her students using tattered, secondhand textbooks, but she supplemented these with lessons in music and poetry. In addition, she taught her students life skills such as cooking, sewing, embroidery, cabinet-making, and rug-hooking.

In addition to her work in the classroom, Louise established a 4-H Club for African Americans in Fairfax County. Through this club, her students planted a garden and raised vegetables to add to a soup that was cooked each day on a potbelly stove.

By all accounts Louise was devoted to her young charges. For example, if they needed help getting to school, she drove them to the schoolhouse herself. She invited students to her home in Washington, DC, so they could experience a big city, and she let students use her home address when they enrolled in a DC high school so they could continue their education without paying expensive tuition fees.

Later in her career, Louise organized a Parent Teacher Association to raise money to buy much-needed classroom supplies. The group also raised money to construct a new schoolhouse, this one with three rooms, which opened in 1939. In 1941, she spearheaded fundraising efforts to pay for electric lighting, a music teacher, kitchen supplies, and bus transportation for the students.

Sadly, Louise suffered a heart attack and passed on April 1, 1948. In 1950, her school was renamed the Louise Archer Elementary School in her honor.

The strategies Anne Sullivan Macy used to teach Helen Keller

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Miracle worker Anne Sullivan Macy employed a number of teaching strategies to teach her deaf and blind student, Helen Keller, how to communicate through sign language. Photo Credit: Public Domain

Anne Sullivan: This teacher’s name is synonymous with “miracle worker.” Anne is the remarkable teacher who worked with Helen Keller, an extremely intelligent blind and deaf child from Tuscumbia, Alabama. The relationship between the teacher and the student is explored in the play The Miracle Worker by William Gibson, an iconic piece of American literature that is frequently taught in public schools. This award-winning play depicts the exact moment at which, due to Anne’s expert instructional efforts, Helen was able to grasp the concept of language. This knowledge unlocked a world of isolation for the little girl, allowing her to connect with her fellow human beings, and making it possible for her to earn a university degree at a time when educating women was rare. The scene is sweet. But what strategies, exactly, did the miracle-working teacher use in order to achieve this breakthrough? After extensive reading on the subject, I think I may be able to identify a few of them.

First of all, Anne read every bit of published material available in her day about the education of handicapped students. She believed that knowledge of pedagogy is the first step to effective practice. In addition to this, Anne had the “advantage” of personal experience, as she herself had wrestled with severe vision impairment as a result of trachoma. I’m sure at one time or another, we’ve all met an educator who is particularly effective at working with students who are facing the same challenges the teacher himself faced as a youngster.

Second, Anne was a keen observer, and she made it a point to watch the normal processes of language acquisition. She then replicated those processes as best she could to fit the particular circumstances and needs of her student. Today, we would probably call this strategy recognizing brain-based learning, and coordinating teaching strategies to fit the way the brain naturally learns.

Also, experts generally agree that much of Anne’s success in teaching Helen language was attributed to the fact that the teacher always communicated to her student with complete sentences. Concrete nouns such as water or spoon, verbs such was pump or run, or adjectives such as hot or smooth,  may be easy to convey. But abstract ideas such as beauty or truth, or certain parts of speech such as pronouns and some prepositions are much more difficult to impart to an individual unable to see or hear. Yet Annie always used these words in her everyday communication with Helen anyway.

Fourth, Anne was especially adept at incorporating experiential learning into her lesson plans. The effectiveness of “learning by doing” has been well documented, but in a day and age when most instruction consisted of rote memorization without necessarily comprehending, Anne’s insistence on teaching through constructed experience was truly innovative. Wading through the creek water, climbing the tree, holding the chick as it hatched from the egg—experiences like these were the staples of Anne’s instructional program.

To learn more about Anne Sullivan Macy, I have included an abbreviated but concise biography of this amazing teacher in my book, Chalkboard Champions: Twelve Teachers who Educated America’s Disenfranchised Students, which can also be found at amazon.com at the following link: Chalkboard Champions.

Social studies educator Matt Bernstein named Maine’s 2023 Teacher of the Year

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Social Studies educator Matt Bernstein of Portland, Maine, has been honored as his state’s 2023 Teacher of the Year. Photo Credit: Matt Bernstein

It is always a pleasure to write about exceptional educators who have earned recognition for their work in the classroom. One of these is Matt Bernstein, a high school Social Studies teacher from Maine who has been named his state’s 2023 Teacher of the Year.

Matt teaches ninth grade Humanities and Social Studies at Casco Bay High School in the Portland Public School District in Portland. He has worked for the past nine years. Previously he taught World History and US History at the Greene School, an English Language Education school in West Greenwich, Rhode Island.

In his classroom, Matt says he strives to cultivate meaningful relationships with students through careful listening and offering support. He strives to created daily opportunities for students to experience joy and belonging at school. Clearly, he succeeds. “Mr. Bernstein’s students and colleagues at Casco Bay High School have described him as energizing, empowering, inclusive, a mentor, supportive, patient, and loving,” reports Pender Markin, Commissioner of the Maine Department of Education. The honored educator also says recognizing the voices of students and supporting student activism is the major thrust of his curriculum. And he asserts that the purpose of education is to help students find their way to contribute to a more fair and equitable world.

In addition to creating curriculum, Matt serves his school as a team leader, a crew team leader, and a professional learning community coach, where he facilitates ongoing professional learning with his colleagues. He is also a Social Studies Vertical Content Team member, collaborating with local experts and teachers across the district to develop instructional content.

In addition to his State Teacher of the Year honors, Matt has been named  the 2022 Cumberland County Teacher of the Year. He was named a 2022 National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Scholar, participating in a seminar titled “Teaching the Holocaust through Visual Culture.” And he is continuously innovating. For example, he created We Are an Indigenous Land, a study program where students work to create educational materials for elementary school students about Maine’s Native American tribes and nations.

Matt earned his Bachelor’s degree in History with an emphasis in European History from Bowdoin College, where he was also named a Bowdoin Teacher Scholar.

To read more about Matt Bernstein, click on this link to an article about him published by the Maine Department of Education.