Tag Archives: Elementary Teachers

Teacher Loren Spears: Working towards appreciation for Native Americans

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Loren Spears

Teacher Loren Spears: Working towards appreciation for Native Americans

I enjoy sharing stories about talented and dedicated educators who work diligently to foster an appreciation for the cultures of under-represented ethnic groups. One such educator is Loren Spears, a teacher, essayist, artist, and tribal council woman of the Narragansett Tribe in Rhode Island.

As a young girl, Loren attended Chariho Regional High School in her home town of Charleston, a rural village in southern Rhode Island. After she earned her high school diploma, she earned her Bachelor’s degree in Elementary Education and Teaching at the University of Rhode Island, graduating in 1988. She earned her Master’s degree in Education at the University of New England in 2002.

Once she earned her degrees, Loren accepted a position as an elementary school teacher in the Newport Public School System. Her teaching career spanned two decades and included twelve years as a first grade and fourth grade teacher working with at-risk children. Throughout her professional career, Loren has always been a strong advocate for integrating more Native American history and experiential learning into the school curriculum. Loren says she remembers, “being in a history class during my elementary days and actually reading that I supposedly didn’t exist, that my family didn’t exist, that my people didn’t exist.” She has spent much of her adult life correcting that misrepresentation.

In addition to her professional accomplishments as a teacher, Loren works as the executive director and curator of the Tomaquag Indian Memorial Museum in Exeter, Rhode Island. The museum was the site of a private, state-certified school, the Nuweetooun School, which this talented educator directed from 2003 to 2010. Nuweetooun, which translates as “Our Home” in the Narragansett language, was founded by Loren with the help of the Narragansett community and generous donations, including monies from a local charity, the Narragansett Tribe, and the Rhode Island Foundation. Though Loren is Narragansett, the school is not connected to any specific tribe. As the school’s director, Loren made sure that the Nuweetooun School provided Native American children from kindergarten through the eighth grade an experiential, collaborative curriculum based on Native American traditions and culture, as well as standard academic subjects including mathematics, language arts, social studies, science, and health.

In June, 2005, Loren received the Feinstein Salute to Teachers, Teacher of the Month. In 2006, she earned the Native Heritage Gathering Award, and in 2010, Loren was chosen as one of eleven educators who were name Extraordinary Women honorees for Rhode Island. Today, this chalkboard champion lives in Providence, Rhode Island, and uses her vast energy to focus on educating the public on indigenous issues, arts, culture, and history through cultural arts programming, lectures, art classes, inter-generational programming, grant writing, exhibit development and design, curriculum development, school design, Native American education, and educational consulting.

Elementary teacher Wade Whitehead shares his expertise with Virginia’s student teachers

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Wade Whitehead

Elementary teacher Wade Whitehead shares his expertise with Virginia’s student teachers

I always enjoy sharing stories about gifted educators. Today I’m sharing the story of Wade Whitehead, a fifth grade teacher from Roanoke, Virginia.

Wade earned his Bachelor’s degree in Anthropology and Elementary Education from the College of William and Mary in 1994. In 2009 he earned his Master’s degree in Educational Leadership from the University of Virginia.

This chalkboard champion inaugurated his career as an educator when he accepted a position as a second grade teacher at Westside Magnet School for the visual and Performing Arts. He taught there until 1997. Since then, he has taught third and fifth grades at Crustal Spring School. His teaching career has spanned a total of 22 years.

Wade is a fourth-generation teacher. Both his parents were elementary teachers. “As a youngster, I spent countless summer days in my parents’ empty classrooms,” remembers Wade. “I witnessed the business end of teaching as they worked at the kitchen table and on the living room floor in the evenings and on weekends,” he once said. “At an early age, I become curious about the mechanisms that drive teaching and that galvanize learning. By the time I was reaching a career decision point, I knew I wanted to dig into exactly how imagination, discovery, and sharing combine to produce new and meaningful understanding and knowledge.”

And he’s more than willing to share his expertise. Wade has led the creation and implementation of the Teachers of Promise Institute, which provides the best of Virginia’s student teachers an opportunity to interact with and learn from master educators from all over Virginia. He often serves as a guest instructor to practicing and pre-service teachers at nearby universities.

For his work in the classroom, Wade has earned a great deal of recognition. In 2000 Roanoke City Public Schools named him Teacher of the Year  and the Milken Foundation gave him their National Educator Award. In 2001, he garnered a USA Today Teacher Award. In 2001, he earned a McGlothlin Award for Teaching Excellence by the McGlothlin Foundation and was named Teacher of the Year by the Southwest Virginia Forum on Education.  In 2013, Roanoker Magazine name him him Most Inspiring Teacher, and in 2016 Wade was inducted into the National Teachers Hall of Fame in Emporia, Kansas.

Kindergarten teacher Edwin Sorto: His kids learn to salsa dance!

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Here’s a teacher you’ve just got to get a kick out of. He’s Edwin Sorto, a kindergarten teacher at KIPP Promise Academy, a public school in Washington, DC. In addition to his classroom responsibilities, Edwin is a professional salsa dancer, and he loves to teach his young students to dance, too!

To supplement the usual curriculum, Edwin has integrated dance into his lesson plans. He believes that learning to dance helps his students obtain a well-rounded education, and it teaches important life skills such as discipline and social skills. “They work incredibly hard at both academics and dance,” Edwin once explained. “This is just one more thing that keeps them engaged in school.” This amazing educator has the kids almost-expertly performing salsa, merengue, and bachata. He has even taught them choreography from Michael Jackson’s “Beat It” video.

Edwin was born in El Salvador, and immigrated to the United States at the age of 14. He was raised in a family where dance was a part of everyday life. Edwin believes that it’s best to learn how to dance when people are young because children pick up dance moves more easily and they are less inhibited than adults.

Edwin received his teacher training at Capital Teaching Residency, an organization which trains new educators in the DC area. There he partnered with a master teacher for one year at KIPP Promise Academy. Once he completed his training, he was allowed to create his own lesson plans. Now, groups of 25 to 30 students meet with him every day for his special afternoon classes where he leads physical education, art, and cultural activities.

When he’s not working with his kindergartners, Edwin travels around the country performing salsa with a dance team called Casineros. He also performs with Cazike, a Latin dance company run by his wife who also teaches at KIPP Promise Academy.

Enjoy this brief YouTube video of Edwin with his dancing kindergartners below:

Special Education and ESL teacher Debra Hurst of Austin, Texas

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Debra Hurst

Special Education and ESL teacher Debra Hurst of Austin, Texas

I always enjoy sharing stories about gifted educators. That’s what this blog is all about! Today I’m sharing the story of Debra Hurst, a retired elementary school teacher from Austin, Texas.

Debra earned her Bachelor’s degree from the University of Nebraska at Omaha. She earned her Master’s degree at the University of Texas at Austin in 1986, and in 1997, she completed the requirements for her certification in English as a Second Language, also from University of Texas, Austin. In 2011, Debra earned her Master Reading Teacher Certification.

Debra has worked in classrooms for her entire 39-year career. She accepted her first position in Marshalltown, Iowa, where she worked with hearing impaired students from infants to high school students. She worked there from 1977 to 1982. In 1982 she moved to Austin, Texas, where she spent the remainder of her lengthy career. For six years she worked as an early childhood deaf teacher at Casis Elementary. From there, she transferred to Galindo Elementary where she worked as a Pre-K and Inclusion teacher. She stayed in that position for ten years. In 1998, Debra taught at Mills Elementary, and she spent three years as a literacy coach at Widen Elementary. From 2013 to 2015, this chalkboard champion worked at the Uphaus Early Childhood Center.

For her extraordinary work as an educator, Debra has earned many accolades. In 2004 she garnered both the University of Texas Excellence in Teaching Award and the Disney Teacher Award.  In 2005, she was given the national KIND Award, and in 2007 she won the HEB Excellence in Education Award. In 2016 she was inducted into the National Teachers Hall of Fame in Emporia, Kansas.

The National Teachers Hall of Fame was founded in 1989 by Emporia State University to recognize dedicated educators throughout the country. The organization conducts an annual induction ceremony to recognize the five teachers selected that year. Located on Emporia State University campus in Kansas, the Hall of Fame honors teachers through a gallery of honorees, a Wall of Fame, a museum, and resource center that tell the history of education through antique textbooks, teacher contracts, and other artifacts. Learn more on their website at nthf.org.

 

Larisa Hovannisian, the Arizona special education teacher who founded Teach for Armenia

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Larisa

Larisa Hovannisian, the Arizona special education teacher who founded Teach for Armenia.

Sometimes a classroom teacher can make the most incredible strides for positive social change. One such educator is Larisa Hovannisian, an Arizona special ed teacher of Armenian descent who founded Teach for Armenia.

Larisa was born on October 21, 1988, in Yerevan, Armenia. Her mother is Armenian and her father is Irish American. When she was just a baby, Larisa’s family moved to California, where they lived for several years. Then the family spent several years living in Russia.

After her high school graduation in Moscow, Larisa returned to the United States, where she enrolled in St. Norbert College, a Catholic liberal arts college located in De Pere, Brown County, Wisconsin. There she earned her Bachelor’s degree in International Business and French, with a minor in Graphic Design. Her goal was to pursue a career in advertising.

But then the path of her life took a different turn. “My best friend from college, who graduated a year before I did, told me about a program called Teach for America,” Larisa once revealed. “Its goal was to recruit young and passionate college graduates and to place them for two years into the most disadvantaged schools in the country. That is how I ended up in Phoenix, Arizona,” she continued. There she worked with special education children with moderate to severe disabilities. Her placement lasted from June, 2010, until May 2012. While teaching, Larisa also earned a Master’s degree in Special Education from Arizona State University.

Once her two-year obligation for Teach for America was fulfilled, Larisa returned to her native Armenia. She became inspired to found a program similar to Teach for America in her homeland. Larisa founded and became the Chief Executive Officer for Teach for Armenia, a nonprofit organization that recruits college graduates and working professionals to serve as full-time teachers in Armenia’s poorest schools. “I have long believed that change—true, meaningful change—begins in our schools,” Larisa once declared.

Larisa Hovannisian: a true chalkboard champion.