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	Last updated 09.08.05

The NEA Foundation Award for Teaching Excellence

2005 Finalist and Recipient of The Horace Mann–
NEA Foundation Award for Teaching Excellence

Donna McCreadie
California Teachers Association (CTA)

Donna McCreadie is a 12th-grade economics teacher at Temple City High School in Temple City, California.

Ms. McCreadie likes to give her students the opportunity to shine. Through real-life economics lessons, she teaches them that economics is relevant to their daily lives and has larger global implications. In her school, 59 languages are spoken. Ms. McCreadie has found a unique way to meet the diverse needs of her students. Since economics is a required course for high school graduation, success in her class can mean the difference between graduation or failure. McCreadie's teaching style virtually ensures that all of her students will succeed. She explains, “The best learning takes place when students are involved in the process. I like hands-on, participatory lessons that make the units I teach come alive. Students need to be active, not passive learners.” She illustrates this philosophy through the use of innovative lessons in which her students take responsibility for their own learning. In a cross-campus teaching project, her high school students teach economics to elementary students using fairy tales as the basis for learning. Ms. McCreadie’s students rewrite fairy tales to teach basic concepts, such as scarcity and choice, then develop fun plays using puppets to help the elementary students to grasp the concepts. Her students have typically scored in the top percentile on California’s Golden State Exam in Economics. Due to the success of the program, teachers in other disciplines within the school have used this model with their students. Locally, an elementary school asked her students to teach an “Economics Day,” which involved 75 high school students teaching more than 500 elementary students for the entire day.

Ms. McCreadie’s creativity and ingenuity have known no bounds. After being selected by the State Department, she launched a very successful exchange program with Volgograd, Russia to allow nine of her students each year to travel for three weeks to teach economics and learn about another culture and economy. Later in the year, Russian students travel to California to complete the program. Because the exchange program involves students staying with families on both continents, parents actively help students to assimilate to the local culture and organize many cultural events. This year completes the three-year commitment from the State Department.

Ten years ago, Ms. McCreadie secured funding from local sources to create a civic youth leadership program for seniors to travel to Washington, D.C., to study American history, politics, economics, and government. This February, 42 seniors participated.

Ms. McCreadie has received many accolades throughout her professional career. She received the Los Angeles Society of Financial Analysts’ 2005 Economics Teacher of the Year Award, Disney’s 2001 American Teacher Award, and the State Farm and National Council for the Social Studies’ Good Neighbor Award in 1998. In 1994, she received both the California Council on Economic Education’s (CCEE) California Economics Teacher of the Year Award and Temple City Unified School District’s Teacher of the Year Award.

Ms. McCreadie’s interest in economics goes well beyond the classroom, and her role as a teacher leader never ends. In addition to her participation in the CTA and the National Education Association (NEA), in 1993 she and a colleague founded the California Association of School Economic Teachers, a statewide organization designed to help economics teachers enhance their lessons. In 1995, she was one of two teachers on the Writing Committee for National Standards in Economics. She acts as mentor in teacher training programs in consumer economics in conjunction with the CCEE, and teaches week-long summer workshops all over the country to give practical experience to high school economics teachers in conjunction with the Foundation for Teaching Economics. She was one of 24 teachers selected to obtain their Masters’ Degree in Economics Education at the University of Delaware on scholarship. Since that time, she has recommended two others from her district for the same program.

Ms. McCreadie received her M.A. in Economics Education at the University of Delaware, and her Bachelor’s Degree in Business Education at California State University at Los Angeles.

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