SYRACUSE  - "The Milken Educator Award goes to Leslie McIntosh!"

Cheering students and applause of state educators and Sen. Pete Ricketts magnified the moment when fifth grade teacher Leslie McIntosh was announced as the recipient of the national Milken Educator Award. The all-school assembly was not just about test scores as she had been told, but something more about teachers helping their community by helping each other.

McIntosh: “During the pandemic, when I was home with my four kids -- which was may more work than being in the classroom teaching -- I had a realization that when I came back, when the schools opened back up, I wanted to be a better teacher.”

She enrolled at Doane University in Crete to learn how to be an effective teacher and have a bigger impact outside of just her classroom. Her experiences teaching third and fifth grade near the farm where she grew up  influenced her master’s degree studies when she came upon the research of Professor John Hattie and the idea that schools are most successful  under the banner that ‘we’re all in this together.’

McIntosh: “One of the things that came out of the pandemic, as far as community support – it was hard coming back, but we had a group of people in our community who called themselves the S-D-A Village.”

McIntosh: “They gave gifts for like two months straight, anonymously, so I had doughnuts show up at my doorstep one day, “You Rock!”

McIntosh: “I thought what can I do to bring people together in our school, but not make it more work. Right? Because teachers are already spread so thin.”

McIntosh: “To be a leader to me just means being there for other people, influencing and just maximizing what’s already being done. Leading is about caring for the people, caring for people, supporting people, creatively coming up with solutions. It’s really about service.”

She started a professional learning community that most people in the building latched on to. Teachers visited each other’s classrooms, provided positive feedback and shared ideas at morning breakfasts.

McIntosh: “It’s not hard to lead in this school building when you have phenomenal people who are willing to hop on board and try new things. With the encouragement from my principal, my mentor (superintendent) Tim Farley, he said ‘look, this is how you should present it to people’ and so I just took his advice and ran with it and made it more about growing and less about just doing more.”

The learning community in the middle school soon became a model for a districtwide program now called The Rocket Way.

McIntosh: “The Rocket Way is putting people before the programming. Right? Looking at how can I serve these kids, what can I do better in my practice so that they’re understanding more, so they know they are cared for. It’s not an easy answer. Teaching is not simple. There’ s nothing simple about it and I can’t even give you a simple answer about what the Rocket Way is, but, to me, it’s certainly about serving the needs of every kid, which is so different. Which is why I love education because it’s a challenge every year. And every day is a different challenge, but it’s certainly putting the needs of each kid before the programs, before the curriculum because the kids have to know that they are cared for and their social and emotional needs have to be met first. So, when you make teachers better at that, then kids learn more.”

McIntosh said the support of the S-D-A Village coming out of the pandemic, the affirming words by students through her 12 years in the classroom and now the national award reinforce the value of showing up early, making an effort outside normal school hours and sharing unified goals.

McIntosh: “It’s what I love to do. I don’t have an on/off switch for teaching. I don’t. I’m not gifted with a switch but when those kids … it’s maybe not during the year because I’m a hard teacher. I make them work hard and they know, they know that. That I want a lot from them … it’s those little affirmations along the way.”

The Milken Family Foundation is presenting awards to up to 75 participants across this country this year to recognize outstanding K1-2 educators for their excellence and leadership in the profession.

 

Event photos courtesy of Milken Family Foundation