Golden Apple Award: Shannon Holly, West Lake Middle School
The final week of April marks the final week for honoring a local school teacher with the JET 24 Pennwest University Golden Apple Award.
This week, the winning teacher is at West Lake Middle School in Millcreek.
Shannon Holly is the music teacher at Westlake. Her mom worked in school and that's what made her choose a career as a teacher.
'I knew I wanted to be in the school in some way,' she said. 'I thought maybe a math teacher. and then that quickly dropped off when I got to high school.'
But she added, 'Then I realized music and chorus was my thing, so I just wanted to continue with that, and I'm very glad I have. This has always been my dream job to be a middle school chorus teacher,' she explained.
Ms. Holly likens being a music teacher to being a coach.
'Yes, we do music things in here, but we all have to come together as a team on stage to make sure we're singing together as a group,' she said. 'So really it's just about bringing all these different personalities and different uniquenesses together to go toward a common goal.'
To reach those goals, it's taken a few years to find the right pitch in the classroom. Holly suggested, 'I really make sure that I get to know the students, what they're doing on the weekend, things that they like. Talking to a student yesterday and found out she's Italian, and they do Sunday dinners. So just small things with students because you have to know your people if you want to work with them and really lead them to success,' Holly said.
PennWest University professor Mary Jo Melvin, PhD, said, 'Ms Holly shows her students through music the importance of teamwork, self-discipline and collaboration. And for some students, I think music may be the only voice that they have when there are no words.'
This week's student nominator, Andrew Pianta, recently played a lead role in the school musical with encouragement from Ms.Holly. He said, 'Ms. Holly is a really special teacher to me because I like known her since 4th grade.' He continued, 'She would always say 'bye kiddos' all the time when she would leave, and I thought that was really special. I was originally going to be in orchestra, but I found out Ms.Holly was going to be in chorus, so I made that switch to be in class with her,' Pianta said.
Like all Golden Apple teachers, Ms Holly received $250 from Big Ideas Learning, an Erie-based math textbook company. 'She found an opportunity to help a student feel like they belong. It opened up a whole world of performance outside a comfort zone, that a student now became a star,' said Damon Finazzo, of Big Ideas Learning.
Watch JET 24 on May 14 at 7 p.m. for our annual Golden Apple Awards special presentation.
That night, a Teacher of the Year will be selected from among this school year's 27 Golden Apple Award recipients, hosted by JET 24's Lou Baxter.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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