Sonoma County education officials recognize three outstanding local educators
After a year when teachers re-imagined instruction online, provided students support through screens rather than in person and adjusted to a slew of shifting health guidelines, how did the Sonoma County Office of Education single out just a few for recognition?
"It was very challenging,“ said Steve Herrington, Sonoma County superintendent of schools. ”I commend every teacher because they all deserve awards.“
Still, even with the extraordinary demands placed upon all 4,500 local educators, a few standouts rose to the top.
The county education office announced this week it has recognized three local teachers for “exemplary, creative, and effective work serving students and supporting families” during a school year characterized by disruption to normal routines and unique challenges.
Danielle Kennedy, a special education teacher at La Tercera Elementary School, is Sonoma County’s 2022 Teacher of the Year. She’s still having a hard time believing it, she said.
“It’s a little surreal,” she said.
A single parent to two children, including one who follows an individualized education plan, Kennedy brought both empathy from her parental experience with special education and her expertise as an educator to bear on the myriad challenges her 12 students faced in accessing school virtually during most of the past 15 months.
Melinda Susan, director of the South County Consortium, which provides special education services to many Petaluma students, nominated Kennedy for Teacher of the Year. She described her colleague as “remarkable,” with an exceptional ability to meet students where they are.
“She would never try and fit a square peg in a round hole,” Susan said. “Danielle’s classroom is full of shapes and if there's somebody that walks through the door who is a completely different shape from somebody she’s ever come across, she will do everything in her power to modify her teaching and her classroom to accommodate that student.”
One extra challenge Kennedy faced in getting to know the students in her class was the fact that she had never spent any time with them in person. Kennedy worked as a general education teacher for 3½ years, and worked with the South County Consortium between August 2015 and June 2019. But she had moved away briefly, and returned to Sonoma County to teach again last summer, when it was already clear the pandemic was set to keep school remote for at least the start.
“It was really challenging,” Kennedy said. “At first it was definitely one of those moments where you go, ‘Maybe I shouldn’t do this. I don’t know if I can do this.’”
But Kennedy rallied. She spoke with the teacher who had formerly taught the students at La Tercera whom she was now responsible for. She set up one-on-one meetings with the students and their families. Little by little, she started to gain a sense of their personalities, likes and dislikes — in addition to their behavioral, social emotional and academic needs.
“I just felt like there was this commitment from her that this wasn’t going to be not as good as real school,” said Angi Busick, mother of a fifth grader in Kennedy’s class last year. Kennedy took the time to learn about Busick’s son Jack, including his proclivity for anything Beauty and the Beast.
That familiarity with Jack’s preferences came in handy while trying to keep him engaged with school, Angi Busick said.
There was the day when Jack, who has Down syndrome and is nonverbal, was fed up with a fine-motor skills activity that involved drawing a frog Kennedy was demonstrating on his laptop. He ran away, Angi said, and she was chasing after him with the laptop trying to regain his attention.
But Kennedy intervened from the other side of the screen: she offered Jack the chance to instead draw a rose, like the one in Beauty and the Beast.
Educators call that moment a “redirect.” But to Angi Busick, a parent and a teacher herself, Kennedy’s quick thinking was a godsend.
“He perks up and turns around,” she recalled. “Suddenly he’s sitting there trying to draw a rose because she’s changed the focus of her activity. But it still gets him to implement the skills she was trying to get him to do.”
Kennedy also made extra efforts to bring tools to her families from the classroom, including desks that she sanitized and dropped off at their homes. For most if not all of her students, a sense of consistency played a key role in enabling them to connect with content and therapies throughout the week.
Providing a designated work space, Kennedy said, was intended “to keep that expectation of when we do schoolwork, we sit at our desk.”
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