Her Story
Patrice McCrary worked her way through Blue Mountain College in Mississippi in three years on grants, loans and work-study, and then stayed home to raise her two children before entering her own classroom the year her youngest started kindergarten. She has taught at Cumberland Trace Elementary School in Bowling Green, Kentucky,, and she holds National Board certification.
She was the 2003 Kentucky Teacher of the Year and represented the state in the National Teacher of the Year program. Before that she was Warren County Teacher of the Year, and in 2008 she was inducted into the Kentucky Teacher Hall of Fame. She was appointed by the Governor of Kentucky to the Governor’s School Curriculum, Assessment and Accountability Council, serves as a personal advisor to the state Commissioner of Education’s annual Teacher Forum, and was elected to her district’s Primary Steering Committee during Kentucky’s education reform.
This year her multi-age classroom included 20 at-risk children out of 24 who were identified with significant delays. At the start of the year every child in her reading group was in the intensive or at-risk range; by midyear 90 percent were reading on grade level, and in math 95 percent were at or above grade level, up from none in the fall.
Beyond the Classroom
McCrary is a state-level master reading trainer, a National Board mentor and the author of a leadership module for teacher interns at Western Kentucky University. She sits on that university’s Teacher Education Model Program Team and has presented to university faculty in New Jersey, to the Association of Teacher Educators in Dallas and to the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education in Washington, D.C. She has also been a keynote speaker at Future Educator conferences.
Her class has run a food drive for a local pantry and a Kindergarteners Care About Our World Day, and she has helped lead the school’s Children’s Relay for Life. She started “Wash and Read,” a program that places books in a laundromat near an apartment community so children can read while waiting, with a fresh set of books each month. She also tutors struggling students from other grades without extra pay.
Philosophy Into Practice
A sign on the door of Room 21 reads, “You are about to enter the world of a child.” Her classroom is organized and maintained by the children, with centers for art, writing, math, science, puppets and a “movie theatre,” and a “classroom ambassador” greets visitors with a handshake and a tour so she can keep teaching. Special education teachers and speech therapists join the class for daily team teaching, and parents are partners through daily communication sheets, a website and a blog.
Learning is celebrated: children “kiss their brain” by touching their fingertips to the top of their head, and a special kindness earns a kiss to the heart. At the start of every year, McCrary makes two promises to parents: she will be the kind of teacher for each child that she would want for her own, and she will never raise her voice. She describes herself as “cheerleader of learning” and says that for her students, “my number one job is to keep us safe.”
“You are about to enter the world of a child.”— Sign on the door of Patrice McCrary’s classroom
“All children can and will learn with joy.”— Patrice McCrary
In Her Own Words
“I promise I will be the kind of teacher for your child that I would want for my own.”— Patrice McCrary
“I will NEVER raise my voice with your child.”— Patrice McCrary
“We live in a society that cheers for sporting accomplishments… why not cheer as loudly and enthusiastically for learning?”— Patrice McCrary
“If my students are progressing then I am teaching. That is success.”— Patrice McCrary
“Children need conversation!”— Patrice McCrary
What Others Said
“Each year Mrs. McCrary takes a group of students who are performing significantly below grade level and transforms them into students who are reading and calculating at or above grade level by the end of the year.”— Dr. Mary Evans, nominator and Principal, Cumberland Trace Elementary School
“Ms. McCrary is a builder, a real role model who is focused on the strengths of children rather than weakness.”— Dale Brown, Superintendent, Warren County Schools
“I have seen no better teaching in all my visits over the years as Commissioner of Education for the Commonwealth of Kentucky.”— Gene Wilhoit, Executive Director, Council of Chief State School Officers
“Mrs. McCrary leaves a lasting impression on the young hearts and minds of all her students.”— Clark, parent of former students