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Date: 3/10/2016
EAST LONGMEADOW – Four teachers in the East Longmeadow Public School District will each receive an Excellence in Teaching Award from the Harold Grinspoon Charitable Foundation during a ceremony at the Log Cabin in Holyoke on May 12.
Recipients include Birchland Park Middle School special education teacher Donna Haskell, Diana Demetrius, a physical education teacher at Mapleshade Elementary School, East Longmeadow High School math teacher Leif Flory and Marianne McCauley, a Grade 3 teacher at Mapleshade.
Superintendent of Schools Gordon Smith said teachers nominate their colleagues for the award. Each year, three veteran teachers are named award recipients and one person new to teaching – between one to three years into the profession – is also chosen.
“The criteria is based around being exemplary in your instruction, what you do with students, but its more than just that excellence,” he explained. “It’s going beyond the basic lesson planning and delivery and instruction. It’s sort of breaking down the walls of the classroom, if you will, and extending beyond.”
He noted teachers chosen to receive the award also engage with the community and pursue professional development.
Haskell said she’s taught special education at the middle school for two years and prior to that worked in the district for seven years as a paraprofessional.
“I run the autism program in the middle school,” she noted. “It was a wonderful opportunity to take on that position and to work with the students that we have in the program. They’re a wonderful group of kids. I feel like they’ve kind of shaped me and my teaching as much as I’ve hopefully taught them things.”
She added she typically presents lesson plans in a variety of ways to reach all students.
“They all learn in different ways,” she explained. “You have to get creative and think outside of the box and present the same piece of material in a whole bunch of different ways so that you reach all of your students.”
Flory, who has worked as a math teacher for the past three years and has been a teacher in the district for 10 years, said he tries to keep students engaged through by having students solve math problems differently and focusing on new activities.
He explained one way of teaching math is a “lesson without words” where students have to complete problems without talking to one another.
Demetrius, who has taught in the district for 29 years, said she considers her nomination for the award meaningful because she is a physical education teacher.
“To have classroom teachers at the elementary level nominate me is a huge surprise and an honor as well,” she noted. “It speaks volumes to being recognized by your peers outside of your content area.”
She added every student she’s taught has had their own unique skill set and to “watch that blossom” has been “daily amazement” for her.
“It’s priceless to see the face light up when they recognize they got it,” Demetrius said. “It validates the time and energy we put in to a lesson for students.”
Demetrius said she’s currently utilizing technology in her physical education classes, which is something the district has embraced.
“We’re trying to use Plickers now, which is a free app designed by educators pretty much for educators,” she explained. “It’s a way to check for understanding … There’s 40 different cards in a set where it’s a multiple choice answering system and I’m using the iPad Air to scan their responses.”
McCauley, who has been teaching for 15 years, said she and Demetrius have worked alongside one another teaching students how the brain and physical activates work hand in hand with one another.
“The brain needs little breaks,” she explained. “If the brain doesn’t get breaks and if you don’t understand how the brain works and if you just try to keep hammering that information in, they’re not going to absorb it.”
She added former student Bret Ralph, who now owns his own insurance company, helped the two teachers become involved with Donors Choose about a year ago.
“We both had a Donors Choose grant fully funded,” McCauley said. “That was exciting. [Ralph] came back to help us fund things for the school.”
More than 2,200 teachers have been recognized by the award since 2002-2003 school year across 39 local communities.