Charter School Capital, Author at Grow Schools

Announcing the 2022 Dewey Award Review Board

The Dewey Awards celebrate teachers who change lives every day, in and out of the classroom. Many of us have experienced the powerful impact of a caring teacher—someone who helped us get to where we are today.

With our annual Dewey Awards, we’re inviting stories of teachers as change-makers in memory of Richard Dewey, a teacher close to our hearts at CSC. Educators, students, and parents are welcome to submit a story of their change-making teacher by October 28, 2022, for the chance at a $1,000 grant gifted to the charter school of their choice.

SUBMIT YOUR STORY

Picking just three winners for the $1,000 charter school grants is no easy task, but our amazing Review Board will read or watch all submissions and select the most inspirational educator stories. We’ve asked them to judge based on what makes their heart pitter-patter. We’re not looking for grammatical perfection, video prowess, or writing expertise—just powerful stories of teachers that inspire.

We are honored to be including the following Review Board participants in this year’s Dewey Awards:

Tandria Callins Ph.D., CCC-SLP, ADHD-RSP, Executive Director & Principal

Language & Literacy Academy for Learning

Combine ambitious, creative, engaging, and strategic, and you have Tandria Callins Ph.D., CCC-SLP, ADHD-RSP. Serving as an Executive Director and Principal at Language & Literacy Academy for Learning, Dr. Callins takes on challenging responsibilities, such as facility expansion and charter replication.

She is a master presenter, professional business coach, and skillful writer. Her impressive operational management background allows her to successfully operate a charter school for students with disabilities and directly oversee rehabilitation services, while providing coaching as a certified Mental Health instructor and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder Related Service Provider (ADHD-RSP) coach. She is currently seeking her certification in the Lean Six Sigma Black Belt in Education. 

In addition to 6 years in the charter school business, Dr. Callins is also very active in the community and serves on multiple boards. She maintains executive and regional roles within her sorority, Delta Sigma Theta, and is a Licensed Funeral Director.

Ask her about how to keep a smile on her face during the ebb and flow of business and life—it’s her secret talent. It’s the thrill seeking, competitive, and spontaneous person Dr. Callins is outside of work. She is supported by her husband, three children, church, family, and friends.

Anna Shults, Founder

ACE Prep Charter School

Anna Shults spent 12 years as an elementary school teacher and was honored as Indiana’s 2007 State Teacher of the year, giving her a sabbatical from the classroom for a year to talk to teachers statewide. During those travels, she saw firsthand the potential impact of a zip code on a child’s destiny—but that a solid foundation in the early grades can help any child soar, no matter where they live.

Schultz went on to help shape elementary reading initiatives at the Indiana Department of Education. She was then sought after by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for a yearlong opportunity to lead the Foundation’s body of work pertaining to empowering and celebrating teacher-leaders. Shults also became a part of Building Excellent Schools, a national non-profit that trains high-capacity individuals to design, found, lead and sustain high performing charter schools in communities where schools have a history of struggling.

In August 2016, Shults launched ACE Preparatory Academy Charter School (an acronym for Academics, Character and Excellence), a K-5 charter school dedicated to the belief that every child deserves a great education, regardless of where they live.

At CSC, we are dedicated to helping schools provide a nourishing environment for their students, and excellent teachers are the heart of that effort.

Tricia Blum, VP of Consulting Services

Charter School Capital

Tricia Blum, formerly an interim turnaround CEO of a charter organization located in Los Angeles, California, is the head of the charter school business department at Charter School Capital. Tricia supports client schools that need strategic business, financial, and operational guidance.

Prior to her tenure as a charter CEO, Tricia worked as an inspiring executive leader of a high-growth charter management organization. During Tricia’s time as a leader at both organizations, she created and instituted operational policies and procedures as well as strategic growth plans including replication and duplication strategies that enabled each organization to successfully scale their education programs.

Prior to joining the charter movement, Tricia practiced transactional law. As a new attorney, Tricia worked in-house at startup and high-growth companies in the mostly in Bay area. Tricia is also an aspiring “Bon Vivant.” In her off-time she enjoys spending time with her boys, designing, eating, traveling, reading and going to the beach. She has settled, for now, in her native California.

For years, I worried about my grandson Dion’s challenges with learning. He did not respond to reading phonics lessons, he had problems deciphering compound sounds, and he struggled to read and write. By seventh grade, I was so concerned about his delays that I put him in a new school: West Hawaii Explorations Academy, a STEM Charter School in Hawaii.

A teacher there, Erik Swenson, assessed Dion’s learning style and brought him to an exciting educational platform. Instead of holding Dion captive in a classroom, where my grandson had always felt unsure of himself, Mr. Swenson took Dion outside to study live marine animals on campus. Mr. Swenson taught my grandson how to make scientific observations after allowing him to visit and feed the animals.

When Mr. Swenson worked one-on-one with my grandson, he let him read about marine animals, particularly sharks, an exciting book subject my grandson willingly read out loud.

Dion not only became a better reader, but he learned to include scientific observations in his writing. Mr. Swenson gave Dion encouraging feedback rather than focusing on his mistakes whenever my grandson wrote a paper.

Mr. Swenson allowed Dion to experience regular outdoor movement while learning, and he integrated marine science projects into Dion’s classroom assignments. My grandson’s confidence was steadily growing as he read and wrote in ways he had never done before.

Dion joined in with his classroom projects with more enthusiasm, and he began to perceive himself as a capable learner. By the end of the school year, Dion had completed several reports, including marine life anatomical reports with drawings, history reports, science projects, and he won first place in Mr. Swenson’s creative writing contest.

Mr. Swenson changed the trajectory of my grandson’s learning. While Dion may have challenges in his future, he now knows how to rise above them and excel as a unique and capable learner. This is a lifelong lesson that only a gifted teacher can impart.

About Mr. Swenson

Mr. Swenson holds a master’s degree in special education from Chaminade University. He has been teaching for thirteen years. His interests are surfing, diving, fishing, and hiking. Mr. Swenson leads a surf team from West Hawaii Explorations Academy.

Since 2017, Charter School Capital has held an annual essay contest celebrating exceptional teachers. We call it the Dewey Awards, in celebration of Mr. Richard Dewey – a teacher who provided exceptional mentorship to our founder and CEO Stuart Ellis. Every year we get a brilliant selection of stories written by students from charter schools all over the nation. This year’s winners are featured here. But each of these stories is worth sharing.

This week we bring you a story written by Lucas Harman, about his fourth-grade teacher at NYOS Charter School in Austin, Texas.

I remember really wanting to stay in the same teacher’s class as I was entering fourth grade. At our school, NYOS, you had two years with the same teacher in repeat until middle school. I had one teacher in Kindergarten and 1st Grade. Then another in 2nd and 3rd. And finally, one in 4th and 5th. And I really wanted the same teacher. A lot of my friends wanted her, and I wanted to be in their class. Some of their older siblings had been with her and had heard a lot of positive things.

However, while most of my friends ended up in that class, I went to a new teacher’s class. I didn’t really have any familiar friends, and I didn’t know her very well, besides some occasions throughout the last year or so. But instantly I realized, even at the young age of 9 and 10 in 4th and 5th grade, that this new teacher was a phenomenal teacher. Like I said, I didn’t really know anyone in that class, but over those small, quick two years, she instantly bonded us tighter than atoms (which I didn’t learn in her class, more like 7th or 8th grade. If only she did, and I might understand all that stuff a little more.)

I am close friends to many of kids from that class even now almost four years later, and I am very grateful for that. My 4^th grade teacher was and I’m sure still is a fantastic teacher. People and teachers always say they try to make learning fun, but I have seen few to actually fully succeed. But she definitely did.

She was very engaging in her lessons and taught me so many things. She also had the perfect level of tolerance. Obviously not comparing her to an old grandmother, but her level of strict well was perfect, and a lot like a classic grandmother. She always expected the best of us, which brought out the best of us, and she made sure we were always kind to each other. Like I said, her lessons were always engaging, but she also made other great activities. I remember she would occasionally have us all make a meal together. We made some killer cheesy orzo, and it was a great teamwork experience. My fourth-grade teacher is a fantastic teacher.

She includes her students, makes them good people, teaches them efficiently and makes it very entertaining, and is like I said, just a plain legit teacher. I have so much respect for her, and I am absolutely positive my classmates do as well. She has definitely shaped me to become as good of a person as I can be. My fourth-grade teacher is great teacher. But an even better person.

Since 2017, Charter School Capital has held an annual essay contest celebrating exceptional teachers. We call it the Dewey Awards, in celebration of Mr. Richard Dewey – a teacher who provided exceptional mentorship to our founder and CEO, Stuart Ellis. Every year we get a brilliant selection of stories written by students from charter schools all over the nation. This year’s winners are featured here. But each of these stories is worth sharing.

This week we bring you a story written by Cynthe Burbidge, about Mr. Lacey of Faith Academy, in Manila, in the Philippines.

The wall of hot sticky moisture greeted my 9-year-old body as I stepped out of the cool air-conditioned van, backpack on my shoulders, and my unkempt long mousy hair still plastered to my neck despite the twenty-minute respite from the heat the ride to school provided. I was still getting used to this humidity, among other strange and unfamiliar encounters that daily racked my senses.

I looked around me, shy and stunned by the swarm of students flooding the hallways. The last two years of my life had been spent in a van very different than the one I was exiting. Most of my education up to this point had been with my mother as my teacher and the van as my schoolhouse. We were missionaries, we spent two years raising enough support to make this trek across the world to another country, two years visiting churches, sleeping in unfamiliar beds, and eating unfamiliar dinners with unfamiliar faces. You would think unfamiliar had started to become familiar to me.

But this was a whole different level of strangeness. Everything from taste to touch to smell was new.

And it had been three years since I had stepped foot in a schoolroom. As I stepped up those tenacious cement stairs to my classroom, my palms were sweaty but not from the heat, and my heart raced in my chest. I didn’t know what to do here.

At that moment, the warmest smile I had ever seen in my life greeted me. It was my 4th-grade teacher, Mr. Lacey. I’ll never forget his balding head and glasses and that gentle grin of his. Somehow, he knew today was new to me and his very persona emanated warmth and welcome and pleasure. He was delighted to see me!

He quickly ushered me to my desk and showed me the pencil sharpener and the class pet and the place to set my backpack. And he handed me a freshly sharpened pencil and asked me to write my name on a placard for my desk.

I am not precisely sure what went through my head that day. I don’t recall my train of thought. But that day, the day I was greeted by Mr. Lacey, I gave myself a new name. No longer would I use the childish nickname I had been known by all my life. Here I would remake myself, and no one here in this classroom would know the difference. Here I would embrace the new, become the new, and new would no longer scare me. I marked that placard brightly and clearly for all to see — here in this land of unfamiliar, Mr. Lacey’s welcome gave me the courage to bridge the unknown and to begin what would become the rest of my life.

Cynthe Burbidge, now – and then.

Magic City Acceptance Academy (MCAA) is Alabama’s first LGBTQ-centered charter school. After receiving three different rejections from the Alabama Public Charter School Commission, the school plans to open its doors in Birmingham to students beginning Fall 2021. MCAA was born out of the need to provide kids who face bullying, violence, and a greater risk of suicide with a safe, inclusive learning environment.[CallOutBox bgcolor=”ltblue”]“I can’t wait to hear the laughter and joy that will be in this space. Also, I’m so excited to see the passion that students will start to ignite in themselves once they see what education can do and what is possible for their lives.”
– Charity Jackson, Chief Academic Officer, Magic City Acceptance Academy[/CallOutBox]

The learning model the school embraces is project-based learning, which is moves away from rote learning and allows students to explore subjects conceptually, allowing for creativity and critical thinking.

“We’re looking at servicing the whole student, from academic to the whole being that is in front of us.” – said Charity Jackson, the school’s chief academic officer, in a recent interview.

The school has a strong commitment to the social-emotional learning process. The school leaders want to go beyond academics, fostering learning on self-management, self-awareness, decision-making, relationship skills and social awareness.

As Birmingham’s premier LGBTQ charter school, MCAA plans to serve 6th through 12th-grade students. The school is purposely designed to provide not only LGBT students but all students with an inclusive learning environment that prioritizes trauma-informed instruction while making all students feel seen and safe.

The need to give marginalized students a safe learning environment plus the tools they need to succeed is a trait that diverse charter schools all around the country share.

LGBTQ-Affirming Charter Schools are Thriving

MCAA isn’t alone in its efforts to provide LGBTQ a safe haven. The Albert Einstein Academy is another example of an LGBTQIA-affirming charter school. Located in Cleveland, Ohio, the school aims to create as a safe space for students of all backgrounds and identities.

Another charter school designed to support LGBTQ students is The Alliance School in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It’s possibly the oldest, longest-running charter school with such a focus. Established in 2008, the school received a charter school excellence award in 2011 and continues to thrive.

Although there aren’t many existing LGBTQ-affirming charter schools, public school districts around the country have stepped up their efforts to support marginalized students by hosting inclusive events, implementing safety programs for LGBTQ+ youth, and providing resources. For good reasons, there is a growing movement to protect LGBTQ youth in schools.

Schools around the country were hit hard by the effects of the pandemic. Traditional public and charter schools alike were forced to adapt to distanced learning, train teachers and staff, and ensure student’s success during an unfamiliar time. Although students and parents learned to adjust to the “new normal,” now that more states are reopening and encouraging students to return to the class, many wonder how the pandemic has impacted the future of learning.

Why Charter Schools Performed So Well During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Charter schools already struggled to receive equal funding to traditional public schools before the pandemic. So, it came as no surprise that charter school administrators were prepared to rally for the resources their students and staff needed during the pandemic.

Despite not receiving the same treatment by local school boards compared to traditional public schools, many charter schools were better prepared to transition to virtual learning. Successful charter schools attribute the smooth transition to three reasons:

Charter schools are less bureaucratic, which allows for easier decision-making.
Teachers at charter schools have more experience dealing with time-sensitive situations.
Charter schools rely more on technology than most traditional public schools.

While traditional public schools grappled with remote learning and ever-changing health policies, charter schools “made rapid leaps from the classroom to the cloud.” A charter school in the Bronx celebrated a huge milestone for the class of 2021 amid the pandemic: all 65 graduating seniors got accepted into college. So, as you can see, despite the challenges schools faced due to COVID-19, charter schools still found a way to rise above.

Lessons Learned: Will Virtual Learning Stay With Us?

Charter schools are presented with many choices when it comes to their reopening plans in the fall. You’ve come this far, so you’re probably wondering what will become of virtual learning as COVID-19 cases fall around the country. Many charter schools have already come forward with their reopening plans and safety protocols for the fall.

Many charter schools’ post-COVID reopening plans include virtual learning as an option for students, and for a good reason. Despite the push by school districts to get kids back into physical classrooms, one poll by the University of Southern California shows that parents are satisfied with remote and hybrid learning, and 42% of the parents surveyed even said they preferred remote lessons for their kids.

It’s unclear that virtual learning is here to stay forever, but it’s probably in your best interest to include virtual and hybrid learning options in your charter school’s post-COVID reopening plans.

Post-COVID: Reopening School Buildings to In-Person Learning

There are over 3 million charter school students in the country, and your charter school must be taking the proper steps to protect every student and staff member. School administrators are faced with tough decisions when it comes to reopening plans post-COVID. Juggling the opinions of parents, state politicians, and teacher unions can make it difficult for charter schools to find a reopening plan that suits everyone.

Still, charter schools must work through logistical challenges to promise a safe return for students in the fall. If your charter school is struggling to source adequate resources or create a safety plan, we suggest you look to charter schools that have successfully reintroduced in-person learning.

Social Justice, a charter school in Washington, D.C., reopened its doors to students in the fall of 2020. Although they still offer hybrid learning options, school leaders report that the following has helped ensure a safe in-person return:

Strategic planning
Small class sizes
Staggered schedules
Strict safety protocols

The Department of Education (DOE) released a handbook that provides charter schools a detailed road map for reopening that we advise you to incorporate into your charter school’s strategies. Consider the following methods suggested by the DOE when mapping out your charter school’s reopening plans:

Include parents, teachers, and staff in the strategic planning process
Implement COVID-19 safety protocol for food distribution
Measure student’s social and emotional well-being through the use of surveys
Ensure school safety and inclusiveness by prioritizing creating a safe environment that supports and responds to the trauma students experienced due to the pandemic

No one is quite sure what the world will look like post-COVID. Whether virtual learning is here to stay is impossible to answer, but one thing is for sure. Charter schools are presented with the unique opportunity to create a reopening plan that prioritizes both student safety and academic success.

The National Charter Schools Conference 2021 (NCSC21) took place on June 20-23. We were proud to sponsor this fantastic event, along with the Walton Foundation, Google, Strada Education Network, and several other prestigious organizations.

With session tracks ideal for teachers, charter school leaders, and school board members, this conference exceeded expectations both in attendance and quality – a feat, considering that the National Alliance sets the bar high every year.

The sessions continue to be available on demand.

We were particularly impressed with Nina Rees’ keynote, NAPCS President & CEO, and the conference’s focus on building community after the pandemic.

We were delighted to see Secretary of Education Dr. Miguel Cardona among the speakers on Tuesday. His address focused on education quality and teaching excellence. Dr. Cardona’s presence at this event cemented our perception that this administration sees the charter school movement as a vibrant and essential part of our nation’s efforts to provide equitable choices in quality education to all students.

Charter School Capital led four sessions:

The Secret Sauce: Charter School Enrollment Marketing – with our Chief Growth Officer Janet Johnson and our VP of Business Consulting Tricia Blum.
This session laid out the fundamentals of enrollment marketing for charter schools, emphasizing the ground game and digital marketing best practices. (Charter School Capital offers a pay-for-performance enrollment marketing solution – a great option that allows charter school leaders to focus on their strengths while resting assured their student enrollment continues to grow. Contact us to learn more about this option.)
Help is Here: Putting COVID-Relief Funds to Work – with our VP of Business Consulting Tricia Blum, and Craig Cason, Executive Director of DuBois Integrity Academy.
Tricia provided actionable advice for aligning ESSER-fund spending with your charter school’s growth plan. At the same time, Craig offered real-life insights from his own experience at DuBois academy. This growing charter school recently partnered with Charter School Capital to upgrade and expand its facilities, including a state-of-the-art air purification system that helps provide peace of mind to parents of students returning to in-person learning.
The Secret Sauce: Charter School Facilities Financing – with Jon Dahlberg and Matthew Gardner
Jon & Matt led this conversation by explaining the options for securing facilities financing, and then answered questions from a lively and engaged audience.
Facilities Financing: No-Cost Bond Alternative with Jon Dahlberg.
This session focused on our unique solution for facilities financing, which offers the benefits of ownership without the stress, cost, and headaches of pursuing a bond of your own. Partnering with Wonderful Foundations, schools can set their course to ownership while redefining their facilities experience from one of tenant and landlord to one of collaborative partnership.

We enjoyed being part of NCSC21. The virtual conference was run with a magical mix of efficiency and warmth by the National Alliance of Public Charter Schools staff. The sessions were well-attended, and the general tone was one of optimism and relief as our nation recovers from the pandemic. Here’s to seeing you all in person at NCSC22!

We Nominate Ms. Love for a Dewey Award! Compass Charter Schools has a knack for hiring great teachers. While we love all of the staff, teachers, and special tutors at Compass, we have a special place in our hearts for Ms. Kimberly Love.

We have known Ms. Love for five years now. Coco became her scholar five years ago when she was a timid first grader. She has Dyslexia and Asperger’s. Ms. Love is the perfect blend of kindness and unlimited patience. She always has suggestions for parents and learning coaches based on her many years of experience as an educator and her personal experience raising four beautiful daughters. When it was time for our daughter Birdie to attend school, we thought about public school, but with Coco at Compass and already having such a great rapport with Ms. Love, it seemed like a perfect fit to keep both girls at Compass. And when Coronavirus hit, we were so grateful that we did.

While public teachers were feeling overwhelmed, as they describe it, “like they were just treading water,” we had the benefit of all of Ms. Love’s years of experience in virtual education. Compass has not missed one day of instruction during the pandemic. Ms. Love has seamlessly seen us through the transition of a new education platform, Accelerate Education, and even finds time while coaching her own family at home to make special videos for us that helped us adapt to this change.

It is not easy during this pandemic, but I would describe our progress more as “soaring” than as “treading water.” I wish that every child and parent confronting Coronavirus and lockdown could have as rich and rewarding an experience as we have had at Compass. Ms. Love is a big part of that experience. It is both challenging and rewarding to be a parent and learning coach, but worth every moment. Compass even offers a course in parenting and coaching! And I received a lovely certificate! I can easily see why Ms. Love chose to teach for Compass. We’ve had coffee with the principal and many special field trips.

Birdie can’t wait for her in-person labs with Ms. Love. She loves all of the unique ways that Ms. Love creates to encourage scholars, like “clapping like you’re on a roller coaster” or “clapping like you’re popping bubbles.” She even has birthday days where scholars all wear hats and sing Happy Birthday. Birdie’s favorite is old-fashioned show and tell that is tied to the subject matter! And she loves when Ms. Love gives them time to “scribble on the ‘marker board’ before class.

Ms. Love thinks of anything and everything to create a sense of community. Her feedback on homework is nothing short of adorable. Our journey from a “shy” diagnosis to a diagnosis of Dyslexia, Dyscalculia, and Aspergers would not have been half as easy or nearly as pain-free for our shy little scholar if it had not been for Ms. Love. She created a safe online environment for her to participate and become acclimated with caring adults. Exceptional content can still be delivered to bright children with special needs by the right professional educators, using a suitable medium. Compass employs every medium and to the best benefit!

We are impressed with the technology chosen and the content of the various courses. We are also incredibly indebted to Ms. Love for referring our scholar, Coco, to testing for dyslexia, where she has been paired with the most wonderful teacher, Ms. Jen. Between Ms. Love, Ms. Jen, and now a fifth-grade addition of Ms. Eagelton and Ms. Grimes, we feel we have a “Compass Dream-Team” for our fifth grader! And we have not lost Ms. Love since she is still with our first-grader, Birdie, who will get to have her until she is in fifth grade. We love the way that Compass allows scholars to remain with one teacher, eliminating a period of “getting to know each other” every year. It provides more continuity of the program. And still, scholars are able to become acclimated to different types of teachers through various labs, tutoring sessions, and clubs during the week.

My husband is a Senior Programmer with Adobe, and I am a retired Literacy Consultant with three teaching credentials, so we recognize when someone is doing an excellent job. We call Ms. Love a “Master Teacher” for all of her superior organizational skills. We only wish that she could impart her wisdom to all public school teachers having such a tough time adapting to online learning during this current pandemic.

Ms. Love has excellent attention to detail, cares deeply about her families, and maintains weekly contact through various mediums flawlessly. She is so valuable to us, and her dedication needs to be shared. Our scholars love her! J.J. Lewis, Compass Superintendent & CEO, calls us the “Ms. Love’s Fan Club” when her families attend his virtual meetings. We have the same kind of fondness for Mr. Lewis. We can’t help complimenting good educators when we have them. It makes all the difference in the world that they so positively impact the lives of our children! The Andersons

Mrs. Blancato was my daughter’s teacher last year. She not only helped me as a Mom to know that my daughters’ vision was struggling, she also handled the COVID transition with the utmost organizational skills, as well as constantly be available to her scholars for them to be successful.

Not to mention, she also has 4 children that were needing her help as their Mother. She is always so professional. She talks to her scholars with respect and love. She encourages reading daily and somehow always got the scholars to do that. As a 3rd grade standard of multiplication, she was able to keep the kids interested and engaged even from the zoom meetings.

All her scholars have respect and love for her and are sad to leave her class, but she keeps them excited to continue on to 4th grade and helps make them successful!

Since 2017, Charter School Capital has held an annual essay contest celebrating exceptional teachers. We call it the Dewey Awards, in celebration of Mr. Richard Dewey – a teacher who provided exceptional mentorship to our founder and CEO Stuart Ellis. Every year we get a brilliant selection of stories written by students from charter schools all over the nation. This year’s winners are featured here. But each of these stories is worth sharing.

This week we bring you a story written by Ana Daley, about Mrs. Cook, of Carolina Charter Academy in Angier, North Carolina.

As an adult, I often think back on my time as a student and the teachers that have helped shape me into the adult that I am today. This has been especially true since I took a position as a school nurse at my children’s charter school (Carolina Charter Academy) this year. I now have the privilege of working side by side with some of the most amazing teachers and people that I have ever had the pleasure of knowing. I see how they pour themselves into these children, day after day. I see, firsthand, the time and energy they spend caring for these kiddos, acting as not only educators but helping provide a comfort zone for these children as well.

Way long ago, when I was in high school, in 1991, I had a drama teacher named Mrs. Cook. The thing I remember the most about her, was how accepting she was of all her students. We were a bunch of outcasts in the drama club. There were children that were just discovering their sexual orientation, kids that marched to their own unique beat, and just basic teen hormone problems. At the time, my parents had split up and were getting divorced. It was an extremely difficult time in my young life, but I knew at school, in drama, that I felt a peace and belonging.

I always felt welcome and accepted in Mrs. Cook’s class. When I felt the least confident and unsure of myself, she could see my potential. She encouraged me to go out for the lead in a play. She then cast me as the lead of this one-act play (Pink Lemonade for Tomorrow), my first ever performance. She directed me, encouraged me, helped me find my self-confidence and my voice at a time in my life when I was lacking all the confidence in myself to do anything worthy of praise. That confidence that she helped me build took that performance and our drama club to state that year. We lost, but we were one of the best in the state of Florida, all thanks to the guidance and direction of our wonderful Mrs. Cook.

For sure, Mrs. Cook is now retired, but I will forever be grateful for the strength she saw in me, when I was having a hard time seeing it myself. This brings me back to the school I am nursing at now. I see the strength and courage of these teachers, reaching out to make a connection with their students, even virtually, as a pandemic rages on all around us. I see them, much like Mrs. Cook, going that extra mile to not only educate, but make their students feel safe, validated, and seen.

Ana Daley, then and now.