Meet Our 2023 Grand Prize Winner

This creates a positive learning environment where children feel safe, loved and supported. Ms. Norma is creative and hands-on, which has helped her students learn and grow. She always has new ideas for lessons and experiments, which keeps her students engaged and excited coming to school every day. Children in her class learn new words and expand their vocabulary every single day leaving families in awe. Ms. Norma is an amazing teacher who deserves recognition for her hard work, dedication, and impact on her students' lives.

The class is full every single year because once families find out Ms. Gay teaches it, they immediately sign up. She helps children learn the alphabet through a fun alphabet marrying activity, based on the book The Wedding of Q and U. Ms. Gay supports her students’ social, emotional and educational learning, and helps them build the confidence needed to become leaders in their own way.

She is an expert at finding teachable moments throughout the day and setting up dramatic play scenarios that help inspire the children's budding sense of imagination. Ms. Kelly's creative curriculum includes simple sensory activities that prompt curiosity and giggles from her students. Her nurturing nature is reflected in how she engages with the children during these activities, staying within arm's reach to encourage exploration and inquiry, while ensuring their safety. Ms. Kelly takes the time to connect with each child, helping them build confidence and independence. She also communicates effectively with parents, keeping them informed of their child's progress.

She brings new ideas to the classroom every day through art, videos and new ways of thinking to resolve real-life problems that make sense to the children. After working all day in the classroom, Ms. Karen voluntarily reviews the entire School’s lesson plans. She provides supervision, ideas and recommended changes to the entire School. She also runs an in-house Child Development Associate program for assistant teachers. She gives them weekly assignments, reviews their submissions and coordinates the development of their portfolio! She’s creating lifelong teachers on site.

Ms. Jer’Terika has remarkable communication skills and consistently keeps families informed about their babies’ progress, weekly activities, changes or challenges and other important information. This helps keeps families connected to their infants and helps them support their development at home. Ms. Jer’Terika takes a holistic approach to childcare by not only tending to children’s basic needs but also encouraging them to explore, play, express themselves creatively and take part in meaningful activities that foster physical, emotional and intellectual growth. Children flourish under Ms. Jer’Terika’s loving guidance.

Her passion for teaching shines through her lessons and how she communicates with families. She readily offers helpful advice on all aspects of toddlerhood from how to stop biting to potty training and learning to try new foods. She expertly helps children manage their big feelings. Ms. Tracee’s endless patience helps her foster a classroom environment where all children feel seen, heard and loved.

She built a vegetable stand out of wood, painted it and brought it into the classroom for imaginative play. The display is redone every couple of months with a new theme, and the children absolutely love it. Additionally, Ms. Baochau created a Facebook page only for the parents of her class to keep them informed. She creates monthly bulletins including important days and celebrations for the following month and what topics the class will be learning.

Ms. Kate has a knack for calming children, no matter the circumstances or behavior, and figuring out what works best for them. She consistently keeps up with early childhood development best practices, implements them in the classroom and is resolute in her commitment to the social-emotional development of children. For example, three years ago, Ms. Kate initiated a “bucket-filling” program to promote kindness and self-awareness for preschool children in the choices they make and their interactions with others. Because of this, the School regularly uses “bucket filling” with the 3- and 4-year-olds.

Through her years at Goddard, Ms. Jean has potty-trained half of Hillsborough, assisted countless families in finding speech or occupational therapy support and tirelessly worked outside of school hours to ensure that her classroom is a place where children can be their absolute best. Ms. Jean also runs her own hugely popular Parent's Night Out babysitting program at the School on weekends.

Mr. Alex’s teaching style is genuine, authentic and practical. He breaks concepts down into relatable, everyday stories and activities that have practical applications in a child’s everyday life. When teaching science, health and math, he incorporates food and cooking, and has the children actively participate in all aspects of preparation. When teaching social studies and about different world cultures and communities, he invites families to share aspects of their culture. Mr. Alex organized a 1K run/fundraiser and taught the children the importance of giving back. At the end of the day, being a teacher is more than teaching, it’s about inspiring, which is what Mr. Alex does each day!