Two SDCS Teachers Win National Disney Education Awards

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District Awards & Recognitions

Two SDCS Teachers Win National Disney Education Awards

Teachers from San Diego Chosen From More Than 75,000 Nominees for Inspiring, Creative Classroom Strategies

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Carmen Munnelly, De Portola Middle School, and St. Claire Adriaan, KIPP Adelante Preparatory Academy, have been chosen from more than 75,000 nominees nationwide to receive the 2006 Disney Teacher Award in celebration of their creativity, innovative teaching methods, and ability to inspire their students. In all, 44 teachers from across the nation received this prestigious award. Each Disney Teacher Honoree receives $10,000 from Disney and a trip to the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim for a week of fun and celebration. In addition, Disney awards $5,000 to each of their schools.

Carmen Munnelly, an eighth-grade history teacher at De Portola, is one of three Honorees being recognized for middle school humanities education. When asked what she loves about teaching, Munnelly said, “I get to do meaningful work with the most energetic and passionate people on the planet. Middle schoolers are hilarious and have big hearts -- a can’t-miss combo.”

St. Claire Adriaan, a sixth-grade mathematics teacher at KIPP Adelante Preparatory Academy, is one of three Honorees being recognized for middle school math education. Creativity is key in Adriaan’s classroom. “To explain integers, I begin by reading a fairy tale about a beautiful princess who was forced to marry a really mean prince. The princess has a really positive outlook on life and loves people, nature and life itself. The mean old prince is a very negative person,” explained Adriaan. “Somewhere in the fairy tale the princess exclaims, ‘I love to love’ and ‘I hate to hate.’ The mean old prince shouts out he ‘loves to hate’ and ‘hates to love’. This forms the basis of my lesson on multiplying and dividing integers. Student knows that love is positive and hate is negative and enjoy using it to solve multiplication and division problems of signed numbers.”

“Disney is dedicated to brightening the lives of children and we salute dedicated teachers like Mr. Adriaan and Miss Munnelly for using creativity in their classrooms to inspire our children to achieve more than they ever thought possible,” said Terry Wick, vice president of Disney Worldwide Outreach

Disney Teacher Honorees are selected by their peers—representatives of leading educational associations from across the United States and former Disney Teacher Honorees. Honorees come from every subject field and every level of PreK-12 teaching.

The Disney Teacher Awards do not simply honor one teacher, they also make an investment in the teacher’s educational community. In addition to the monetary awards, Disney flies each teacher, along with his/her principal to the Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando for a six-day professional development institute where they can refine their own innovative teaching approaches by sharing ideas and learn how to engage other teachers to build an effective collaborative teaching culture at their school. Once they return, Adriaan, Munnelly, and their principals will work with experts from the Center for Collaborative Education in Boston to design a schoolwide plan for making teaching more effective.

About Disney Worldwide Outreach The Disney Teacher Awards program is part of Disney Worldwide Outreach. Disney is dedicated to making the wishes of families and children a reality through public service initiatives, community outreach and volunteerism in the areas of compassion, learning, the arts and the environment. In 2005, Disney contributed more than $190 million in cash, in-kind support and public service air time globally. Disney VoluntEARS, company employees who donate their time to outreach projects, contributed more than 442,000 hours of service. For more information on Disney’s outreach initiatives, please visit www.disneyhand.com. For more on the Disney Teacher Awards, please visit www.disneyteacherawards.org.

About San Diego City Schools
Serving more than 132,000 students, San Diego City Schools is the second largest school district in California, with 216 educational facilities and more than 14,500 full-time equivalent positions (representing more than 15,800 employees). The district is committed to accelerating gains in student performance, supporting schools and enhancing the classroom learning environment through modernized facilities and resources. SDCS also seeks to strengthen parent, community and higher education support of the educational process.

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