Her Story
Dana Kelly says she knew she wanted to be a teacher from the moment she brought a package of windmill cookies to share in kindergarten. In fourth grade she wrote lesson plans, gathered the neighborhood children, and “ran a one-room school” in the backyard; as a sixth-grade bus patrol she ran her bus “like a summer camp,” leading an hour of singalongs and game learning. She was raised in a bustling family of six children by what she calls “nurturing, enriching, communicative, and demanding parents,” and she was the first female from a third generation of European immigrants in her family to graduate from college. She finished a five-year program in three and a half years, with a double major and a minor, while working forty hours a week, and she signed her first teacher’s contract at 21.
It was in middle school that she “fell in love with special children,” the day a four-year-old paraplegic family friend, who had been told she would never walk, turned a somersault in her living room and later walked out on stage as a Christmas surprise for her family. Kelly began her career in 1973 as an assistant at the Easter Seal Treatment Center, then taught learning-disabled children in Maryland and Indiana, where she also served as a learning styles and perceptual-motor development consultant for Indiana University and earned a master’s degree in special education, finishing as the top graduate student in her field. Along the way she discovered the gifted child, “often lounging stagnantly in classrooms that asked them to ‘wait’ for their classmates to catch up,” and she has taught gifted students in Indiana and Florida ever since.
In Florida she helped found Rochelle School of the Arts in Lakeland, the first K–8 school of the arts east of the Mississippi, before moving in 1999 to Southwest Elementary. Her recognition has been wide: Southwest Elementary Teacher of the Year, Polk County and Florida Gifted Teacher of the Year for 2000–2001 (Florida Association for the Gifted), Polk County District Teacher of the Year for 2001, and a top-five state finalist for the Florida Education Association’s Teaching Excellence Award. She became a National Board Certified Teacher in 1999 and earned a Disney Teacherrific Award of $5,000 in 2000, along with Disney’s Dreamers & Doers award in 2001.
Beyond the Classroom
Kelly believes “the world is our classroom.” She has served on the American Red Cross Disaster Assistance Team, on call seven of every twenty-eight days, responding to single-family fires, opening hurricane shelters and feeding firefighters at wildfires, and was named the Polk County chapter’s Volunteer of the Year in 2000. Her students certify in CPR each year and invented “Kids Kits,” game kits donated to the county’s twelve primary hurricane shelters. An active member of Sister Cities International at the local, state and national levels, she wrote the 40-page application that earned Lakeland the national “Best Overall Sister Cities Program” award for 1998, studied volunteerism in Japan’s schools on a 1997 grant, and met with Florida’s Secretary of State as the state’s educational liaison.
Her students have also planted an international peace pole on school grounds, paid for a doctor’s services for deaf children in a sister city in Moldova for a year, adopted fifty children at a school for the deaf and mailed them monthly care packages, and written “love cards” to 120 seniors in nursing homes. She wrote and won five United Way “Youth Promise” grants, a $15,000 after-school youth service club grant that chartered six clubs in three county schools, and the community service award that supported 47 projects with 21 community agencies in a single year. The Disney Community Service Award honored her school’s service-learning program, which she wrote. Her principal called her “the driving force behind our school-wide service effort,” and said she helped transform the school into “a community of givers.”
Philosophy Into Practice
Kelly holds that a teacher’s job is to take every child “from where he is, to a new height,” and she gives her students “a say” in what they learn. Her room has origami cranes hanging from the ceiling, radishes growing in a corner, raccoon skulls and shark jaw bones on the counters, and learning centers and interest corners that let children pace their own work. They brainstorm what they want to learn at the start of the year, and their questions are woven into the required curriculum, so that one student studies World War II alliances after reading Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes while another studies cancer treatments and a third folds a thousand cranes to wish children well. She teaches the top three percent in the “gifted” program, but serves roughly three times that number, and she keeps an “open door” for any child who wants to take part.
“Teach a single child, you may leave a mark, teach a society to value and educate our children, you strengthen tomorrow!”— from her essay, “Philosophy of Teaching”
“Learning is a journey, not an end.”— from her essay, “Philosophy of Teaching”
In Her Own Words
“‘Zest for learning’ probably most succinctly describes me as an individual and a teacher.”— from her essay, “Getting to Know You”
“I am motivated by ‘If ya ain’t the lead dog, the scenery never changes’ and ‘life is a daring adventure or nothing at all’.”— from her essay, “Getting to Know You”
“Students love to give. They’re ready to learn, through modeling and hands-on experience, that giving back to their greater community is a lifelong characteristic of good citizenship. The world is our classroom.”— from her essay, “Outside the Classroom”
“…they only mask the single most important issue to schools today: Meeting the needs of the single student.”— from her essay, “Educational Issues”
“When ‘my’ students are allowed to develop academic prowess through topics they are interested in… students set the pace for their learning futures and reflect the values of a successful society. I teach in heaven!”— from her essay, “In the Classroom”
What Others Said
“She is a very special teacher who strives for nothing less than excellence in her classroom and within her community.”— Richard Dobler, Principal, Southwest Elementary School
“Dana is one of a handful of teachers of the gifted in this county who also provides leadership to other teachers.”— Hazel H. Sellers, Gifted Specialist, Exceptional Student Education, Polk County Schools
“Miss Kelly reflects all that is good in our world and will represent you well as an ambassador of this national award!”— Janey C. Maddox, NBCT, Valleyview Elementary; colleague
“Her efforts go far beyond ‘teacher’ in the name of education for Florida’s children!”— Pat Buchanan, Sister Cities International Florida State Coordinator
“Ms. Kelly sets her standards high, not only for her students, but for herself as well, while always leaving room for the bar to be raised ‘just a little bit higher’.”— Dawn Manger, parent and former colleague
“She is really nice and not strict. She helps people learn better… She loves kids.”— Third graders in the gifted class, Southwest Elementary