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	Last updated 9/25/03

The NEA Foundation Award for Teaching Excellence

2003 Finalist and Recipient of The Horace Mann–
NEA Foundation Award for Teaching Excellence

Wendy Doromal
Florida Education Association

Wendy Doromal teaches high school students at risk of school failure in Orlando. Her service-learning program has helped students value themselves and achieve at new heights. Ms. Doromal has partnered with over thirty-five nonprofit agencies to immerse her students in projects that improve their academic knowledge by making subject matter relevant to them as well as cultivate their civic responsibility by taking them out of the classroom and into the community to serve.

For example, Harvesting Success—The Study of Homelessness and Poverty in Central Florida engaged students in a wide range of activities including collecting and analyzing data from social service and government agencies, filming a documentary on homeless people living in nearby woods, sponsoring food and clothing drives, reading novels about poverty and homelessness, volunteering in a soup kitchen, and hosting a fundraising banquet. The students also created a website and organized a walk-a-thon to raise money for the Health Care Center for the Homeless.

“By the end of the project students were able to see themselves as I see them—as gifted, contributing members of society, rather than as ‘problem students,’ as they are too-often labeled,” she says.

In her COMPACT program, Ms. Doromal matches each student with a mentor from the community and a tutor from a local university. Students learn the teamwork, communications, and critical thinking skills that make them lifelong learners.
Last year, Ms. Doromal developed the Service Learning Council, through which her students awarded mini-grants to other teachers and students to implement their own service-learning projects. The council members were invited to speak at the mayor’s homeless conference after they wrote a letter to the editor of their local newspaper concerning laws targeting Orlando’s homeless population.

During the seven years she has taught in Orlando schools, Ms. Doromal has received thousands of dollars in grant money to support and enhance her service-learning projects, including funding from Florida Learn and Serve, the National Gardening Association, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and the Constitutional Rights Foundation. Ms. Doromal has also received many awards, including the Florida Education Association Human and Civil Rights in Education Award and the Disney Teacheriffic Special Judge’s Award. Prior to her arrival in Florida, she taught a variety of grades and subjects in Rota, U.S. Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Islands.

A board member of the Orange County Classroom Teachers’ Association, Ms. Doromal chairs its Human Relations Committee, serves on the Government Relations Committee and PAC Steering Committee and has lobbied the state government on behalf of public education. She also serves on the Florida Education Association’s Human and Civil Rights Committee, is secretary of the Orange-Osceola UniServ Council, and a member of the Collaborative Bargaining Leadership Team. As a National Board Certified Teacher, she maintains a valuable link to the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards through her local and state affiliates. Ms. Doromal was instrumental in establishing the “Second Saturdays” program to support national board candidacy among NEA members. As a human rights activist, she testified at the U.S. Senate about labor issues and human rights violations in the Northern Marianas Islands.

Her students, colleagues, parents, and community respect Ms. Doromal. She epitomizes the dedicated, proficient, compassionate education professional.

For more information on The Horace Mann Companies, our partners in The NEA Foundation Award for Teaching Excellence, click here.

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