Springfield educators receive Excellence in Teaching awards
The award winners will be celebrated during the Springfield School Committee meeting on April 10, and later at a regional banquet at the Log Cabin in Holyoke on May 13.
Six Holyoke educators awarded for excellence in teaching
The annual awards, presented by the Harold Grinspoon Charitable Foundation, honor educators across western Massachusetts who demonstrate dedication, innovation, and leadership in their schools. The initiative is supported locally by the Irene E. & George A. Davis Foundation, among other community partners.
'We are grateful to the Harold Grinspoon Charitable Foundation and the Irene E. & George A. Davis Foundation for their unwavering support, which has made this award a lasting tradition within Springfield Public Schools,' said Superintendent of Schools Dr. Sonia Dinnall. 'To the Pioneer Valley Excellence in Teaching Class of 2024 — congratulations! Your dedication fuels the belief that every student has the power to succeed. This honor reflects the impact you make every day. Embrace it with pride, knowing that you are educating to empower and inspiring the future.'
2024 Springfield Public Schools Award Recipients:
Gina Lamoureux, Elias Brookings Elementary School, Grade 1 Special Education
Stephanie Roszko, Elias Brookings Elementary School, Math Instructional Leadership Specialist
Patricia Clark, Frank H. Freedman Elementary School, Grade 3 Classroom Teacher
Grace Ribeiro, German Gerena School, Grade 5 ELA Teacher
Anne Carmichael, Hiram L. Dorman Elementary School, Grade 5 ELA Teacher
Jared Leone, John J. Duggan Academy, Grade 11/12 History and Law Teacher
Lisa Gagnon, Liberty Elementary School, K-2 Special Education (LINKS)
Megan Kieselback, Lincoln Elementary School, Grade 2 Classroom Teacher
Jennifer Jones, Lincoln Elementary School, Grade 1 Classroom Teacher
Laura Rapa, Rebecca M. Johnson Elementary School, Grade 3 Classroom Teacher
Jamie Pirog, Roger L. Putnam Vocational Technical Academy, Geography Teacher
Yaveiska Alicea-Figueroa, Roger L. Putnam Vocational Technical Academy, ELA Teacher
Erika Cruz, Special Education Department, K-12 Behavioral Specialist
Kathryn Hakanson-Stacy, Springfield Central High School, MLL Algebra Teacher
Michael Bagge, Springfield Central High School, AP Biology Teacher
James MacKay, Springfield Central High School, Algebra I Teacher
Emma Giordano, Van Sickle Academy, Grade 8 ELA Teacher
Morgan Healy, Van Sickle Academy, Grade 7 Adjustment Counselor
Sandra Robinson, White Street School, Grade 5 Classroom Teacher
Takara Weir, William N. DeBerry Elementary School, Grade 2 Classroom Teacher
New Teacher Awardee: Natalie Rauh, Hiram L. Dorman Elementary School, Grade 3 Classroom Teacher
Each award recipient will receive a $250 check, an engraved plaque, and additional benefits such as tuition incentives from several local colleges and universities, including:
Elms College
Bay Path University
Mount Holyoke College
Springfield College
Western New England University
Westfield State University
University of Massachusetts
Other perks include a WGBY membership, providing access to a wide range of digital educational resources, and a complimentary three-month membership to the Springfield Jewish Community Center or a regional YMCA.
The awards program, now a longstanding tradition in the district, is made possible through the support of several local organizations and sponsors, including American International College, Arrha Credit Union, Country Bank, and Meyers Brothers Kalicka.
'These educators are making a lasting difference in the lives of their students and the success of Springfield Public Schools,' Dinnall said. 'Their hard work and dedication continue to inspire us all.'
WWLP-22News, an NBC affiliate, began broadcasting in March 1953 to provide local news, network, syndicated, and local programming to western Massachusetts. Watch the 22News Digital Edition weekdays at 4 p.m. on WWLP.com.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
CBS News
7 days ago
- CBS News
Thousands of Colorado teachers begin careers without debt thanks to education grant
Thousands of educators in Colorado are starting their careers as teachers thanks to a relatively new grant. The Education Retention and Recruitment Grant, created more than two years ago, helps Colorado create an expedited path to a career in teaching through grants to cover the costs of schooling. Rosemary Borger is one of the many who have benefited from the grant. She was working in another career field when she realized her appreciation for great teachers. Borger said she was inspired by teachers who helped her son navigate his own unique needs. "I felt like I could make a positive impact. I knew there was a drop in teachers, so I felt like it was a good time to get into the profession. Because I knew I could help kids," Borger said. "I realized I wanted to be part of a group like that; they were very supportive of my son's education." When Borger learned of the ERRG, she decided to apply and was given a grant. "It supports those folks that have that interest in educating but may lack the resources to pay for their education," said Margarita Tovar, Chief Talent Officer for the Colorado Department of Education. "We believe retention starts at the door. This program helps open access to anyone who has that passion and purpose to support our students." For people like Borger, the grant allowed them to pursue their dreams of becoming a teacher without having to quit their previous full-time jobs or go into significant debt. "It lowers the access barriers and it increases retention for educators," Tovar said. Tovar said the grant program has already helped more than 2,000 new teachers enter the workforce. "Without the grant, I don't think I would have become a teacher because my family didn't have the funds for me to go back to school and stop working. So, the grant made it possible," Borger said. "I was able to work full-time with a young child and get the license all at the same time. So, if parents are considering becoming teachers, this is a good way to get into the classroom." Something Borger happily said she's living proof of. The education department is currently fielding applications for its third year of grants. Applications for 2025 close on September 30.
Yahoo
12-08-2025
- Yahoo
Is ‘Singapore math' a better way to teach the subject?
BALTIMORE -- Imagine you're a character in a math problem. You have three platters, but two cakes. All three platters need to have the same amount of cake. How would you split it? Without even saying the word 'divide,' a group of about 20 teachers from private schools spanning Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia, stacked cubes and folded notecards to find solutions. The answer? Two-thirds of cake per platter. But the problem doesn't end there. During this training in 'Singapore math' — teaching methods and curricula developed in Singapore, which has consistently led the world in student math performance — Math Champions founder Cassy Turner then asked the teachers explain why they did what they did, before moving on to the next question. Owings Mills K-12 girls' school, Garrison Forest School, hosted the two-day public workshop recently on this style of teaching math. After seeing success adopting Singapore math for its lower school over the past two years, Garrison is expanding the curriculum through eighth grade this year. Other Maryland schools — private, charter and public — have also incorporated the teaching style into their curricula in the hopes of emulating Singapore's three decades of success. Singapore math was developed by that Southeast Asian country's Ministry of Education decades ago. It is a teaching style that avoids rote memorization and focuses on a slower learning approach to teach mathematical concepts, allowing students to understand them in greater detail. At the kindergarten level, that means not introducing the plus or minus symbols until the end of the year, U.S. Singapore math textbook consultant Susan Resnick said. Instead, students can spend their time telling stories with numbers to decode the relationship between them. For example, after looking at a picture, a student might say, 'There are four boys in the picture and one girl. Four and one make five.' Research has found that students learn math best when mixing in physical objects like counting chips and blocks with drawings and in-depth discussion, said Pat Campbell, retired professor emerita at the University of Maryland's Center for Mathematics Education. Singapore math teaches concepts beginning with concrete materials, then progresses to pictures and then brings students to abstract symbols like the plus or minus sign. Older children's class discussions go over three or four different methods the students used to solve a problem, always ending on the one closest to the day's goal, Turner said. Singapore math's portrayal of numerical relationships is particularly 'clever,' especially in how it uses drawn bars to help students visualize relationships, Campbell said. Memorization doesn't work well On international measures of math performance, Singapore has consistently been a top scorer since the mid-1990s. Seeing those high scores spurred American textbook publishers to localize Singaporean math materials for U.S. classrooms, according to Campbell. But at the core of Singapore math is problem-solving, Resnick said. 'Where we grew up, maybe thinking that calculation was the goal of mathematics … they teach calculation as a support to get to problem-solving,' she said. Singapore teaches students starting with attitudes and thought processes, Resnick explained to the teachers, whereas American math education usually gets bogged down in the skills and concepts. Developing a conceptual understanding of math from the ground up isn't unique to Singapore math — it's 'something that people in math education have been espousing for many years, but it requires professional development on the part of teachers,' Campbell said. Contrast Singapore math with what Campbell called 'a show-and-tell model' of math instruction 'where somebody shows you how to solve a problem and you practice doing it over and over and over again, with a reliance on memory.' 'We actually know that doesn't work very well if you look at the product of kids' achievement,' she said. Getting American kids to love math By fourth grade, Turner said, kids know if they like math or not. They're more aware of their peers and can get embarrassed by their answers. 'They won't ask questions, they won't raise their hand, and so they fall further and further behind,' she said. But Singapore math can make the subject students' third favorite behind P.E. and lunch, Turner said. At Garrison, all three divisions previously used a different textbook program. Extending Singapore math through middle school means students only have to transition to upper school math, said Sydney Carter, the middle school's dean and a sixth-grade math teacher. Strategies, like drawing bar models that students learn early on, can be used to scaffold on more advanced concepts like ratios, Carter said. 'That helps them feel like, 'Oh, I can access this sort of.'' That confidence is translating to results for Garrison's students. The majority of K-5 students showed more than a year's worth of growth in math on Measures of Academic Progress assessments taken last school year, according to Shannon Schmidt, director of Garrison's Boyce Center for Learning and Thriving. Top scores for Singapore's students The 2022 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which tests 15-year-olds, showed 'some 41% of students in Singapore were top performers in mathematics.' The United States had 7% top performers in math. Even taking top performers out of the equation, Singaporean students still had an edge over their American counterparts: 92% of Singaporean students attained at least Level 2 proficiency in mathematics; the U.S. has 66% reaching at least Level 2. The trend holds for younger students too. On the 2023 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, which tests fourth- and eighth-graders in those subjects, Singapore had international top scores for both grades, while the U.S. had around average scores at both levels. But Singaporean students are also highly creative. On the 2022 PISA creative thinking assessment, 58% of 15-year-olds were considered top performers on the evaluation, more than 30 percentage points above the average for the 38 countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. The U.S. did not participate in the creativity assessment. The difference in math instruction isn't the only difference between the two countries' education systems, though. Singapore has a national math curriculum. The government produces the educational materials. All teachers across the country teach the same math concepts the same way, Campbell explained. In the United States, by contrast, student-teachers rarely get intensive instruction on how to teach math. Throughout her experience training teachers across the country, Resnick said it's typical for student-teachers without advanced degrees in math to get one class in math education and four or five in reading. 'We don't teach our elementary teachers how to teach mathematics. We just don't, and that's why it's necessary for people to have outside … professional development around the teaching method,' Resnick said. Varied methods in the U.S. Additionally, U.S., state, and local jurisdictions, as well as individual teachers, have far greater control over curriculum and teaching methods than they do in Singapore, Campbell said. Although some math curricula in Maryland do emphasize the concrete models and strategy discussions, Campbell said, the professional development teachers receive and the instructional models they use vary. Howard and Montgomery counties support students' conceptual understanding of math, she said. Howard County had the state's highest percentage of students proficient in math for the 2023-2024 school year, as measured by MCAP scores: 41.1%. Montgomery County came in fourth with 33.4%. The state adopted new math standards recently. The update follows Maryland's adoption of Common Core Standards in 2010 and the updated College and Career Readiness Standards in 2013 and 2014. All school districts are required to align their curriculum to the College and Career Readiness math standards, Cherie Duvall-Jones, spokesperson for the Maryland State Department of Education, said when asked if a public school district could use a Singapore math curriculum. 'If you really want to address student achievement across schools, you need to have the school as the unit of change. All the teachers have to be essentially in the same approach to teaching mathematics,' Campbell said. 'Everybody can be good at math. It's a matter of how you're taught.' Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
06-08-2025
- Yahoo
Ali Angelle wins 2026 Louisiana Teacher of the Year award
ST. MARTIN PARISH, La. (KLFY)–Ali Angelle, a fourth-grade teacher at Teche Elementary, spoke about being named the 2026 Louisiana Elementary School Teacher of the Year. Angelle, who teaches English and Social Studies at Teche Elementary, was originally selected as Teacher of the Year at Teche Elementary, as well as at the district level, and then out of 24 semifinalists in the state, was awarded the prestigious title. Angelle shared how she loves what she does but said being honored statewide is a blessing she never expected. 'Sometimes teaching kind of gets a bad rap, and teachers kind of struggle, and so it's just the confirmation of like, we see you, you're doing it,' Angelle said. Close Thanks for signing up! Watch for us in your inbox. Subscribe Now Angelle has been teaching for seven years and expresses a deep love for her students and said she learns from them as much as they do from her. 'I feel like they're in a sweet spot, so like they're old enough that, like you can be a little bit sassy with them and make jokes, and they laugh about it, but they're still young enough that they really like you,' said Angelle. Angelle's advice for new teachers includes knowing their content, using technology, and most importantly, showing that they care. 'It starts with the relationship,' said Angelle. 'If they know, like oh my teacher she's nuts, but she loves me, or she wants me to do well, then they're definitely going to rise to that level.' Angelle not only is she celebrating this new honor, she also received her master's degree in May. She said she isn't ready to leave her fourth-grade students yet, but she is excited to see what the future holds. Latest news Abbeville's district map battle continues LCG Parish Council discusses tax renewals, Northeast Regional Library at meeting Raw milk tied to over 21 illness cases, 7 hospitalizations in Florida Lafayette luncheon honors law enforcement's community impact Ali Angelle wins 2026 Louisiana Teacher of the Year award Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Solve the daily Crossword
