Here are this yearâs Teacher of the Year nominees, as chosen by their respective schools in New Tampa. Also listed are the Ida S. Baker (ISB) Diversity Educator of the Year and the Instructional Support Employee (ISE) of the Year nominees from each New Tampa school.
Turner Bartels K-8 School Teacher: Briana Rabiero, 2nd Grade ISB: Marelisa Moreno ISE: Sue Garcia
Liberty Middle School Teacher: Megan Sullivan, Reading ISB: Brenda Silva ISE: Daina Vasquez
Of the nearly 250 nominations that came in to the Hillsborough Education Foundation for the Ida S. Baker Diversity Educator of the Year award, Hunterâs Green Elementary (HGE) teacher Amanda Palmer was named one of just four finalists considered for the award this year.
And, although she didnât take home the prize on Jan. 21 (at a ceremony held at Blake High School in Tampa with a mostly virtual audience), she says she was thankful just to be considered.
âI feel so honored and grateful,â she says. âFirst, that the Hunterâs Green staff nominated me, and then to know it went to the District level, it blows my mind.â
Palmer teaches students with varying exceptionalities (VE), working with students in the regular classroom who need additional support because of a diagnosis or disability. The students are part of a regular class, and Palmer comes in to their classrooms to help them be successful in that inclusive classroom environment.
âIâm like their biggest cheerleader,â she says.
Palmer says that she was completely shocked back in December, when Mike McCollum, chief advancement officer with the Hillsborough Education Foundation (HEF), and a parade of administrators and others told her the big news that she had been chosen as a finalist.
âWhen they came to the school to surprise me, I said, âIs this real life?,â Palmer says.
The Ida S. Baker Diversity Educator of the Year is one of three awards given out each year by HEF.
The foundation explains that Ida S. Baker became Cape Coral Highâs first principal in 1977 who went to on to become the first African-American to serve as Deputy Superintendent for the Florida Department of Education (DoE). She was known for her efforts to support diverse students and encourage academic success and, after her passing in 1992, the DoE created this statewide award in her honor.
For the award, each school in Hillsborough County may nominate one teacher who âembodies the pioneering spirit of Ida S. Baker by going above and beyond to meet the needs of our diverse student population.â
The other two annual awards given by HEF are Teacher of the Year and Instructional Support Employee of the Year.
All 11 schools in New Tampa submitted a nominee in each category (see next page). This year, Palmer was the only New Tampa nominee to be chosen as a finalist.
When Palmer was a student at the University of South Florida, she interned at HGE as a first grade teacher. She then filled in temporarily as a VE teacher, and says she fell in love.
âI never knew this position existed,â she says. Palmer got certified in order to be the schoolâs VE teacher, and even went back to USF to earn a Masterâs degree in Exceptional Student Education. She has spent her entire teaching career â nine years now â as the VE teacher at HGE.
She says she loves the way her job allows her to work with not just the 22 students currently included in her caseload, but also with the other students in the classrooms she supports.
While Palmer was able to bring a limited number of guests to the awards ceremony with her, all her other supporters, family and friends watched online in a virtual watch party âroomâ just for her. Each of the other finalists had their own watch party rooms, too.
About the whole experience, Palmer says, âI think itâs pretty amazing. All for just doing something I love.â
At our press time, Freedom High was expected to open its 2020 football season on Sept. 11, hosting its New Tampa neighbor and archrival Wharton High, but the toughest opponent for both teams to combat that night likely wasnât each other.
It was Covid-19.
And, that doesnât just go for football. Avoiding the virus is arguably the biggest challenge facing teams across Hillsborough County (and the country), as high school athletes, their coaches and administrators try their best to remain socially distant and safe in what is certain to be the strangest prep sports season ever.
âItâs going to be very…whatâs the word Iâm looking for? Intensive,â says Wharton athletic director Eddie Henderson âItâs going to be a lot of work.â
The county is following all CDC guidelines for sports and also has issued its own 18-page guide, which covers everything from daily cleaning and sanitizing to quarantining and tracing those who become infected. The rules, which include the difficult-to-enforce ban on handshakes and high fives, seek to prevent a major outbreak of the virus.
Social distancing will be the key to keeping crowds at athletic events from spreading the virus.
One of the rules that will make football feel very different is that the bands and cheerleaders will not be permitted to travel to away games. That means that when the Wharton Social Distancers traveled to take on the Freedom Social Distancers, they had to leave behind some of their loudest and most ardent supporters, not to mention a group that is woven into the very fabric of the Friday night football experience.
The crowds will be smaller. A limited number of fans will be allowed into sporting events like football and volleyball this fall â players (and band members) are allowed to choose only four spectators, but they have to be registered on a list at least a day before each game, so they can be issued electronic tickets. Each playerâs foursome will be a âspectator podâ and will be required to sit together.
Fans, who must wear masks in the stands, will find seats clearly marked off in groups of four, socially distant from other pods.
The biggest hurdle, however, will be keeping the athletes healthy. If an athlete tests positive, he/she and anyone in close contact with them will be quarantined for 14 days. That can wipe out any teamâs roster in a hurry.
Football will be a huge challenge, due to the unavoidable closer quarters presented by bus transportation and the sheer number of players (often ranging anywhere from 50 to 80 or so) cramming into small locker rooms.
The football teams at Hillsborough and Jefferson high schools have already had infected players and, as a result, may not be able to play the first two weeks of the season.
âIâm holding my breath, and the reason is that, when weâre putting this many people together, you just donât know,â Henderson says.
While football is the biggest concern, every sport will present its own set of issues.
For example, cross country will have to stagger its starts to avoid large gatherings of runners from multiple schools. Volleyball players will be expected to avoid the traditional high-five after every point, and swim meets with multiple teams may be hard to find. In fact, Whartonâs usual âhomeâ pool at the New Tampa YMCA is not permitting the Wildcats to host any meets there.
Provided that high school sports can make it all work under such unique and demanding circumstances, middle school sports will not begin until the second quarter, with track starting first on Oct. 12, followed by flag football and volleyball on Oct. 19.
âEverything is so uncertain,â Henderson says. âAre we gonna be able to push through or will there be a setback? I hope we can push through â I want to see the kids play. They have suffered enough the last six months with (the 2019-20 school year) getting cut short, and the makeshift way of doing school. I hope we push through.â
Following a summer of indecision and fear of the unknown, New Tampaâs schools finally opened their doors to students for in-person learning for the first time since they closed in March due to Covid-19.
âWoo hoo!,â shouted one parent, as she drove off smiling after dropping her two kids off at Benito Middle School.
Students spent the first week of the 2020-21 school year eLearning only, as the fight over whether or not to open brick-and-mortar classrooms for students and teachers raged on.
The Hillsborough School Board initially leaned towards doing eLearning only for the first nine weeks, before settling for four weeks after consulting a panel of medical experts. However, that decision was then overturned by Superintendent Addison Davis, after Florida Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran threatened to withhold millions of dollars in funding to schools that did not offer a brick-and-mortar option for parents.
Busy at work cleaning and prepping their classrooms for a socially-distant learning experience, teachers finally opened the doors to their students on August 31.
After the first week, Chiles principal Teresa Evans said things went âremarkably well.â At Chiles, roughly 450 students were home learning online, while 400 or so learned in classrooms. Evans said none of her teachers were forced back into the classrooms, and praised their efforts in the opening week.
âI think we planned and planned and planned and what we planned has worked out so far,â Evans said. âThe kids arenât struggling with masks the way people thought. They have been very compliant, and the parents have been incredibly compliant and helpful in following the new rules.â
Those new rules include keeping desks as far apart from each other as possible, eating lunches outside under the schoolâs covered courts keeping everything as clean and sanitized as possible.
âWe were nervous, but never terribly worried,â Evans says. âWe were very careful and will continue to be, and we are tweaking things as we go.â
While the Covid-19 numbers were slightly rising in Hillsborough County during the first week, schools hadnât reported any large outbreaks.
According to the school districtâs Covid-19 dashboard, the first four days produced only 21 positive cases among students, and another nine from school staff.
The district is not reporting if any classrooms have been quarantined.
From March through July, the district reported 284 confirmed cases of Covid-19.
In New Tampa, the only schools to report any cases were Freedom High and Tampa Palms Elementary, with each reporting one student positive from the first day of school.
John and Sheri Thrasher opened Excel Music on Cross Creek Blvd. in 2006. They have adapted their business model to meet online student needs during the pandemic.Â
For more than 14 years, Excel Music on Cross Creek Blvd. in New Tampa has been teaching private music lessons to students of all ages. But lately, something has been very different than âbusiness as usual.â
Since March, all of Excel Musicâs students have been taught exclusively virtually.
âThe nature of in-person music lessons doesnât permit social distancing,â says Excel Music owner John Thrasher, âso weâve chosen to do virtual lessons.â
He says the schoolâs building, located in the Cory Lake Isles Professional Center on Cross Creek Blvd., has remained closed since the Covid-19 pandemic began in March. However, Excel Musicâs 20 teachers and dozens of students are as active as always, teaching and learning from their homes.
John says all of Excel Musicâs teachers are either university trained (many with Master of Music degrees) or they have at least 10 years of study and performing experience.
The music school offers lessons in voice and practically every instrument, with piano, violin, guitar and drums being the most popular, according to John, and quite a few students learning brass and woodwind instruments, too, such as trumpet, tuba, saxophone and clarinet.
Students work with the same teacher week after week, so although their teachers are now only on a computer screen, the student still know them.
âIt provides some normalcy and routine in their lives, when a whole lot of normalcy and routines have been removed,â says John, who adds that the school has continued to add âa steady streamâ of new students throughout the pandemic.
âObviously, parents are just as interested in improving their childrenâs lives as they always have been,â John explains. âMusic is still important, and virtual lessons are kind of the only way that you can do it right now.â
A Little Background Music…
John and his wife Sheri originally opened Excel Music in 2006, with the dream of providing the opportunity for young people to be trained for the kinds of careers and lives they once experienced themselves.
âWe both had long careers in music, and were professional musicians who were able to make a living performing,â John says, adding that he was the drummer for country singer Mickey Gilley for many years, which gave him the opportunity to perform on TV, at the White House and for people all over the world.
In the 1990s, John and Sheri had success together with a band of their own in Japan called Tz, where he says they sold tens of thousands of CDs. They also found themselves immersed in a culture that revered teachers, which led them to start thinking about passing on the knowledge and experience they had gained to the next generation.
âWe met tremendous people, saw great places, and made a living,â John says. âWe started thinking, âWhat if some of the kids who come through our school can experience what weâve experienced?ââ
However, John says he and Sheri recognize that the vast majority of their students will not go on to have professional music careers.
âOur teachers are good enough for that type of student, but most of our students will go on to have another career, such as a doctor or lawyer or something else,â he says.
He adds that the goal at Excel Music is to provide students with an appreciation for music, plus provide the benefits of learning how to play and/or sing.
âThereâs so much data about how great studying music is for your brain for spatial learning and big-picture thinking,â John explains. âThere are always studies coming out saying that because music is a whole brain activity, when kids learn music, their math and other school skills improve, too.â
Kristy Sargent, who lives in West Meadows, says her 10-year-old daughter Regan has been taking piano lessons for more than a year with Excel Music.
âBoth the school and her teacher have been so amazing,â says Kristy. âTheyâve been very flexible with being online. It hasnât been easy to have everything change so much, but theyâve done a really, really good job.â
Kristy says one of her favorite things is how well the teachers communicate. âItâs a fantastic school that feels very personal. It feels like they really care about you and your child.â
The Right Teachers, Too
John and Sheri want each one of their students to feel that way, so they carefully choose only the best instructors.
They ensure that every teacher they hire to work at Excel Music is background checked, has appropriate credentials, and truly knows both their instrument and how to teach it. John says that just because someone has a doctoral degree in music or some other accomplishment,that doesnât mean they will relate well to teaching students.
âThey have to know how to teach, which is a completely different set of skills,â explains John, who says that â over the last 14 years â he has tried to show New Tampa families that they can trust Excel Music to make great decisions about who to hire to teach for the school.
He says two teachers have been with Excel Music since it opened in 2006, and a number of others have stayed with the Thrashers for five, six, or eight years.
âWe definitely have stability,â he says. âWeâve been doing this for a long time.â
Age Doesnât Matter
And, while many of Excel Musicâs students are kids, the opportunity to learn to sing or play an instrument is certainly not limited by your age.
âA lot of adults want lessons, too,â says John. âWe get retired people who say theyâve wanted to play their whole lives, and now theyâre finally going to do it.â He fondly recalls a man who came to Excel Music to learn how to play the trumpet at 86 years old!
Dylan and Diya Arun give a thumbs up to online learning with Excel Music.
John says the last few months have been extremely trying and that he and Sheri â like virtually all small business owners â are just trying day by day to make the best decisions they can for their company, their employees and their customers. However, at the end of the day, they feel really good about the nearly 15 years theyâve spent leading Excel Music in New Tampa.
âWeâre putting music in peopleâs heads,â he says. âWeâre not making widgets that end up in landfills; weâre doing this thing thatâs good for our community and for the world in general.â
Excel Music, located at 10353 Cross Creek Blvd., Suite I, is open for virtual lessons only right now. For more information or visit ExcelMusic.org, call (813) 991-1177.
