Educators who are looking for ways to teach kindness win the classroom may want to take a cue from Derek Brown, an elementary teacher from Arizona. For ten years, he has been showing his fifth graders Steve Hartman’s “On the Road” stories aired by CBS Evening News. Derek says the stories, that have been called lessons in Kindness 101, teach the kids how to be “grounded and good.” To learn more about this, view the two-minute You Tube video below:
Elementary school teacher Vanessa Thomson of Gladstone, Missouri, has garnered a prestigious Milken Educator Award. Photo credit: North Kansas City Schools
I always enjoy sharing an inspirational story about a talented educator who has earned accolades for work in the classroom. Today’s story is about elementary school teacher Vanessa Thomson of Gladstone, Missouri. She has garnered a prestigious Milken Educator Award for 2023.
Vanessa teaches second grade at Chapel Hill Elementary School in her home town of Gladstone. In a career that spans 15 years, Vanessa has spent all of them at Chapel Hill. The honored educator has accomplished amazing results with her students. Last year, her kids demonstrated significant growth in all content areas, with 70% ending the year reading at or above grade level and more than 90% mastering most math standards. Because her school’s population of English language learners (ELLs) has grown in recent years, Vanessa has focused on building a variety of language development strategies. And her hard work has yielded the desired results. In spring 2022, 89% of her ELL students demonstrated mastery on all priority standards, up from 25% at the beginning of the school year.
On her campus, Vanessa has a reputation for being a passionate advocate for her students. And her devotion doesn’t end when they leave her classroom. “I follow up with them. I have been invited to graduations and parties,” Vanessa says. “The kids my first year of teaching are graduating from college,” she continues. “If one of them wants to be a teacher or they receive some encouragement from me that takes them on a positive path, I have done my job. After all, it was my first-grade teacher that inspired me to be a teacher,” she concludes.
In addition to working with students in her classroom, Vanessa serves as a facilitator for Chapel Hill’s leadership team, she is a member of her District’s strategic plan action team, and she mentors new and beginning teachers. She also serves as a District demonstration teacher for writing, hosting teachers from across the district for lesson observations and sharing of best practices.
Vanessa earned a Bachelor’s degree in Elementary Education from William Jewell College in Liberty, Missouri, in 2008. She earned her Master’s in Curriculum and Instruction from Baker University in Baldwin City, Kansas, in 2013.
The Milken Educator Awards are hailed by Teacher magazine as the “Oscars of Teaching.” For more than 35 years, the program has recognized excellence in the world of education by honoring top educators around the country with a $25,000 cash prize. The honor includes membership in the National Milken Educator Network, a group of more than 2,700 exemplary professional educators from all over the country. To learn more, click on Milken Educator Awards.
Elementary school teacher Melissa Kmetz has been named as her state’s 2023 Teacher of the Year. Photo credit: Ohio State Department of Education
I always enjoy sharing stories about exceptional teachers who have earned accolades for their work in the classroom. Today, I shine a spotlight on Melissa Kmetz, an elementary school teacher from Cortland, Ohio. She has been named her state’s 2023 Teacher of the Year.
Melissa was raised in Campbell, Ohio, where she graduated from Campbell Memorial High. At the time of her graduation, she earned a full academic scholarship to Youngstown State University, where she earned her Bachelor’s degree in Early Childhood Education, summa cum laude, in 2003. She earned a Master’s degree as a Reading Specialist from Youngstown in 2007. That year, she earned the ETS Recognition of Excellence award. She has also completed courses at Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Once she earned her degree, Melissa inaugurate her career as an educator in Salem, Ohio, where she taught first grade. While there, she garnered a Martha Holden Jennings Grant to Educators, which she used to fund a literacy lending library. Later she relocated to Lakeview Local Schools, where she has been teaching ever since. In all, her career as a professional educator spans 20 years.
Currently, Melissa teaches third grade at Lakeview Elementary School, where she has been since 2006. She has a reputation for being a strong advocate for culturally diverse curriculum, global education, and student activism. In fact, in 2010, the honored teacher developed a Change the World Project in her school district. Through this project, for the past 12 years, Melissa’s students have been activists, developing charitable projects to benefit those in need both in their community and abroad. Over the years, these projects have included support globally to help those experiencing hunger, offering assistance to individuals impacted by natural disasters, helping to grant the wishes of terminally ill children, creating comfort kits for children in foster care, and supporting local animal shelters.
Melissa can really see the value in these projects. “It’s just really getting them to see that their hard work can reach out into the community and also other countries, as well,” she asserts. “That there’s a reason they’re doing everything. Not just that ‘A’ on a paper, but that they can use what they know to make the world a better place,” she concludes.
Indeed, Melissa.
New Mexico teacher Ann Nolan Clark earned acclaim as an author of children’s books for Native American students. Photo credit: Alchetron
Throughout our country’s history, there have been many examples of dedicated educators who have worked with underprivileged student populations. One such teacher was Ann Nolan Clark.
Ann Clark was born in Las Vegas, New Mexico, on December 5, 1896. When she was 21, she graduated from New Mexico Normal School, known today as New Mexico Highlands University, located in Las Vegas, New Mexico.
After her college graduation, Ann inaugurated her teaching career as a professor of English at Highlands University. But the young educator wanted to work with younger students. In 1923, she accepted a position teaching reading to Native American children in a one-room schoolhouse at the Black Rock School in Zuni. Later she taught in a school at Tesuque. Little did she know that this position would last 25 years.
While teaching in the Indian schools, Ann observed that the Native American children learned more easily when their primers were geared towards their own life experiences, so she began writing primers with characters and situations that honored the the Pueblo way of life. Many of these primers were later published by mainstream publishing companies. Eventually, Ann broadened her scope and wrote children’s books with Navajo, Sioux, Finnish, and Hispanic characters. In addition to these stories, the prolific teacher also published a number of professional articles under the pseudonym Marie Dunne.
Between 1940 and 1951, the US Bureau of Indian Affairs published fifteen of Ann’s books. Her book In My Mother’s House, illustrated by Pueblo artist Velino Herrera, earned a Caldecott Honor Book Award in 1942. During the 1940s, Ann also wrote multi-cultural books for the Haskell Foundation and the Haskell Indian Nations University at Lawrence, Kansas. One of them was The Slim Butte Raccoon, illustrated by Andrew Standing Soldier.
In 1945, the Institute for Inter-American Affairs funded an educational trip for Ann to travel to Mexico, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Peru, and Brazil. Her experiences on this trip led her to write such books as Magic Money, Looking-for-Something, and Secret of the Andes, which garnered her the 1953 Newberry Medal. Ann earned other awards as well. She was given the Distinguished Service Award by the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1962, and the Regina Medial by the Catholic Library Association in 1963.
This remarkable educator passed away on December 13, 1995. During her lifetime, she published over forty books, 31 of them about Native American culture.
Dr. Kellie Taylor, a teacher from Boise, Idaho, has earned a coveted 2022 Trailblazing STEM Educator Award from the Challenger Center and the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Photo credit: Idaho News
Many hardworking educators earn accolades for their create innovative STEM programs. One of these is Dr. Kellie Taylor, an elementary school teacher from Idaho whose innovative curriculum garnered her a coveted 2022 Trailblazing Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) Educator Award from the Challenger Center and the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA). This annual award celebrates five K-12 educators from around the country who have gone above and beyond to nurture the next generation of innovators in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.
Kellie teaches second and third graders in the Gifted and Talented program at Hawthorne Elementary in Boise. During her entire 19-year career, the honored educator has prioritized STEM subjects in her classroom. She emphasizes project-based learning with a strong focus on coding, robotics, space education, and hands-on learning. In addition, she leads STEM curriculum development, hosts STEM-focused after-school activities, and shares her passion for STEM education by leading professional development workshops for her colleagues.
Kellie earned her Bachelor’s degree in Elementary Education in 2004, her Master’s degree in Educational Technology in 2006, and her PhD in Educational Technology in 2016, all from Boise State University. In addition to her Trailblazing honors, she was also selected an Albert Einstein distinguished Educator Fellow in 2019. In this role, she collaborated with the Educational Outreach program of the Library of Congress. She has also worked for three years as a STEM Master Teacher at the Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC.
As part of her AAIA award, Kellie received $5,000, and an additional $5,000 went to her school. In addition, she received free access to Challenger Center STEM programming, which supplements classroom lessons through Earth and space-themed journeys. The programming includes hands-on, simulated learning experiences; Center Missions delivered at Challenger Learning Centers around the globe; Virtual Missions delivered by Challenger Learning Center Flight Directors; and digital experiences delivered by teachers in their classrooms. To learn more about the Trailblazer Award, click on this link to AIAA.
