Duval Elementary Math Teacher of the Year-- Angela Phillips

Yesterday, our own Chets Creek Elementary math extraordinaire, Angela Phillips was honored as the 2008 Duval Elementary Math Teacher of the Year! This award was handed from one deserving Chets Creek math teacher, Rick Pinchot, to another, Angela Phillips! This honor could not have been bestowed on a more humble and deserving teacher. Angela exemplifies the characteristics of a stellar mathematics teacher and coach. She is adored by those who call her leader, by her Chets' colleagues as a whole, by her students and their parents. In fact, the word math is rarely mentioned in our community without Angela's name attached!

Angela has 16 years of teaching experience. She joined the Chets community in 1999 just a year after the doors opened and single handedly redesigned the way in which we work. She aligned standards, instruction, and assessment, wrote diagnostics, implemented common formative assessments, and penned homework sheets for the intermediate grade levels. She implemented the departmentalized design, oversaw the implementation of a new program--Math Investigations, and ran intermediate math professional development. She began the Elementary Math Cohort which went district wide two years ago and became the Academy of Mathematics. She's attended and presented at local, state, and national conferences, and consults nationally.

Angela had the vision and oversaw math implementation at Chets Creek, and for that I am grateful. I've had the privilege of reaping both the personal and professional benefits of having Angela as a colleague. And, our students are young mathematicians because of the foundation Angela has built. Thank you, Angela for all your hard work and dedication, and Congratulations to our 2008 Math Teacher of the Year!