Have you ever had a teacher who did more than merely educate you, but one who wanted to see you grow as a person? Someone who made your day infinitely better just by walking into her classroom? Ms. Wood, my former eighth grade science teacher, is one of those teachers. She brightens your day with a smile and inspires you with her amazing work ethic. I have come to admire her commitment to our school and to the students she taught.  I view Miss Wood not only as my teacher, but as someone who respects our environment as a very involved community member, and wants to see each of her students succeed in school and in life.

Whenever I walked into the upstairs classroom of Ms. Wood, the first thing I would hear was a friendly, “Good morning!” followed by a smile. She exudes a positive, yet sweet, personality that brought joy to my mornings, especially Monday mornings when I needed that positivity the most. Her ability to stay positive during challenging times is something I admired and respected in her class. Teaching over a hundred diverse middle school students cannot be easy; it must take a lot of extra hours and smiles.

You can tell after being in Ms. Wood’s class, that she wants to see all of her students succeed and grow, even if it means changing her teaching style, or spending a little extra time on a specific unit. She consistently made learning fun and comprehensible through her real world problem solving lessons; she wasn’t one of those teachers that gives you a stack of papers to figure out on your own, testing you on their content without review.  Ms. Wood would make learning easier for me by showing me multiple ways to understand her lessons, whether it was through experiments, projects, models, or even just drawing a diagram and labeling it. I could tell she wanted to see me succeed and grow as a student and person.

Ms. Wood loves our environment and constantly puts in effort to keep it clean and health through leading by example. She has orchestrated many events that educate our community  about our environment and ways to keep it thriving. Once she organized an event called, “Water Night” where families around the district would come and learn about our ecosystem, and she had students, including myself, run the event. This experience was not only entertaining, but allowed me to act in a leadership role which challenged me. She also entered our school in a contest called “Project Unless” where we traveled to the Philadelphia Zoo and presented our project to judges on ways to conserve water and help endangered species thrive. Ms. Wood is very active in her community and puts in an abundant amount of effort to support healthy ecosystems.

Miss Wood made learning new information engaging and allowed her students to have some fun while doing it. The title of Educator of the Year is a very impressive achievement that she definitely deserves due to all the amazing, inspiring things she has accomplished for her students and our environment. With her good work ethic, friendly smile, and positivity, Ms. Wood made science, and my final year at Brandywine Springs, a year I will not soon forget.