Outstanding Kindergarten Teacher

I am not surprised that Kindergarten teacher Haley Alvarado was selected to be a feature teacher on Channel 12.  She was nominated by two former students.  Haley is one of those teachers that is the whole package.  She is an amazing teacher in the classroom.  When you watch her teach you are mesmerized by her ability to teach content and manners and respect all at the same time.  She has a way of talking to kids that lets them know that she cares about them but that she also holds them responsible for their own behavior.  She is the one that you will often see at the tee-ball game or the dance recital or the soccer games, cheering on one of her students after school hours.  I know she is all those things because I worked in her room for an entire year, day in and day out.  She was simply magic.

Haley is a master at organization and regularly shares the lessons and artifacts that she works so hard to provide for her own class with the rest of her grade level.  She is always the one that takes the new teacher under her wing and takes the time to answer questions and check to make sure everything is going smoothly.  Any time I ask her to respond to an e-mail from a colleague from out of town, she responds with cheerful suggestions and insight.  She gives unselfishly of her time to her colleagues.

The thing about Haley is that she is also a wonderful mother who keeps her family time sacred.  She manages a nuclear family with several children of her own and even has time for foster children.  She is, in every way, a model of what teachers today offer to their children in the classroom and to our society in general.  It is such an honor to teach and learn beside teachers like Haley, who make me proud to be an educator.