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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

Josephine Moreno Hyatt
Colorado Education Association

Jolene Hyatt, a primary-grades teacher for twenty-eight years, teaches kindergarten at La Junta Primary School in her hometown of La Junta, Colorado. For her eclectic approach to instruction, she draws from Carl Jung, Maria Montessori, and Miles Zintz. One of Ms. Hyatt’s major teaching goals is to create, stimulate, and sustain her students’ desire to achieve. After observing the social, cognitive, physical, and emotional skills of each student and holding conferences with parents, she develops learning expectations for the class. Filled with colorful posters, books, hands-on materials, animals, and plants, the classroom setting that Ms. Hyatt creates offers her students a world of tantalizing learning opportunities.

“Working with parents, community, and students enables learning and leads to academic achievement,” she says

As soon as Ms. Hyatt receives her class list for the upcoming school year, she contacts the children’s families. Her efforts almost always lead to 100 percent family involvement. Her outreach does not end there, however. High school students mentor her kindergarteners, senior citizens adopt her class, and town VIPs join her students for lunch. For many years, local business owners have become partners with her classes in the “Adopt a Class” program, where children learn about and realize the purpose for reading, writing, and attending school.

Participation in the Colorado Teacher Corps as a novice teacher gave Ms. Hyatt the knowledge and confidence to be innovative. From that experience, she developed Community and Schools Together, a program that offered conversational Spanish and English, tutoring in mathematics and reading, and mentoring. Later in her career, she served as a community-school liaison to the Otero Junior College Advisory Council. Because of her fluency in Spanish and her respected position in the community, district staff value Ms. Hyatt as an interpreter and mediator for Latino families.

The advocacy skills she learned through NEA training have enabled Ms. Hyatt to rally support for friends of education in state and national political campaigns. She notes: “After my initiation to the association [NEA], I came to understand that education must be the focus of the public eye. I committed myself to advocacy for education and on behalf of my students.’’

A past president of the La Junta Education Association, Ms. Hyatt serves on the association’s board of directors. She is also a representative and legislative liaison for the Southeast Colorado UniServ Council.

Ms. Hyatt has received numerous awards during her tenure as teacher. She has been named “Who’s Who Among American Teachers” for several years, has been nominated to Disney Teaching Excellence awards, and received the “Teachers Are the Heart of Learning” Award in 2002, having been nominated by former students who felt she made a difference in their lives.

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