On May 5 at the National Liberty Museum in Philadelphia, Dayna Kowalski, a first grade teacher at Greenwood Elementary School in Hamilton, received one of eight “Teacher as Hero” awards sponsored by State Farm to honor outstanding educators in the Delaware Valley.
Last fall when Robyn Ivanisik, Greenwood’s climate and culture specialist, started reading the four requirements on the nomination form for granting the exceptional teacher award, she says that Kowalski “just popped into my brain.” Fostering diversity, resolving conflicts respectfully, understanding the relationship between rights and responsibilities, and honoring student voices were all things she had observed in Kowalski’s classroom. Kowalski also shines through her efforts to improve school climate via the Renaissance Committee she spearheads and to build staff morale.
Modest about her own achievements in the classroom, Kowalski says, “I just do what I do.” But she admits that “I do some odd things that most people wouldn’t ordinarily do.” As she listened to the award presenter talk about her, she remembers thinking, “Yes, that is kind of special. It does happen in my classroom.”
For one thing, Kowalski says she is “a believer in alternative seating: children can sit on a stool, on a Pilates ball, or on a squishy seat. I don’t believe children should be sitting at a desk all day.”
Kowalski always holds a weeklong “kindness challenge,” and this year her first graders completed 145 random acts of kindness: picking up fallen pencils, holding the door, offering a chair, playing with someone on the playground, or simply saying kind words.
“I am a big believer that a nice word goes a long way,” she says.
Kowalski’s students often lack background knowledge, which she builds every day as part of her lessons. On a field trip to Jenkinson’s Aquarium at Point Pleasant, 10 of her students had never seen the ocean.
“I had tears in my eyes seeing children see the ocean for the first time. You had to be there to look at the pure wonder on some of their faces,” she says.
For Kowalski, improving the atmosphere in the entire school is important. Through Renaissance Committee, whose goal is “to improve the climate and culture in our building,” she has accomplished the purchase and installation of “buddy benches” on the playground.
“If you are looking for a friend or having a bad day, you can sit on the bench,” she says, then the “job” of other students is “to go over and play with them, be friends, and cheer them up. She adds that providing a place for kids to take a break is also reducing bullying.
The Renaissance Committee also sponsors service projects, like Valentines for Vets and filling Blessing Bags with essential items, this year for Homefront. Each Friday, the committee sponsors a school spirit contest, supervised by Kowalski; on Fridays, the students are encouraged to don crazy socks, hats, or inside-out clothing, and the class with the most participants during the semester is the winner for the grade level.
Kowalski also makes sure students who try hard are recognized at a rally at the end of each semester.
“It’s not necessarily about good grades, it’s about how hard you work,” she says.
Under the slogan “be epic, not ordinary,” students who bring up their grades or who have improved their behavior in some way are honored. “We try to take the focus off who is smartest in the building and look at who is really trying their best,” she says.
Kowalski also understands the critical role that parents and families play in the school community. At the math and literacy night she organizes—so important in a high-minority, high-ESL school like Greenwood—parents receive tools to help their children with math and reading.
‘That award wasn’t just for me; it was for the whole building. You can’t be a great teacher if don’t have a great support system.’
For the parents of her first graders, Kowalski uses a message board through the ClassDojo app to support back-and-forth communication. Parents can send Kowalski instant messages through the app, for example, questions about homework, and she can answer instantly. She also posts pictures of what is happening in the classroom.
“It’s a great tool for parent engagement,” she says, adding that “my classroom is always open to my parents.”
The app also provides communication to the children on how they are doing each day. Each child is assigned their own monster, which Kowalski pulls up on her smart board every morning. Via these “monsters,” the children “get points for working cooperatively, being kind, and doing their best,” she says. “They can see their progress during the day and it helps them focus on good choices.”
To help the neighborhood and the community, as well as the school, Kowalski, Ivanisik, and two other teachers are applying for a $100,000 grant through Farmers Insurance to upgrade the playground, which currently consists of a blacktop marked into sections and a small area of grass with a single piece of equipment. In order to make it work for the 80 to 90 students outside at recess in a single period, she says, “We have to structure our recess: my class in a square, another in a circle, another on the equipment,” she says.
“For children who live in apartments and rowhouses, it is a big deal for us to have a playground and give back to the community,” she says. If they get the grant, they would like to install turf and fitness walks, as well as another piece of equipment in a dedicated kindergarten-first grade area.
Kowalski grew up in Hamilton, where her mother was a school secretary at Reynolds Middle School, and her father worked at Mercer Rubber, a brake factory.
She earned a bachelor’s degree in education at Rider College. “From the time I was little, I always knew I wanted to be a teacher,” she says.
To support her college education, she looked for a job where she could work with children and found one at a daycare center, which allowed her to go to school mornings and work in the afternoons. Also, after giving birth to her daughter, she was able to bring her to the center.
“While I couldn’t be a stay-at-home mom, I was with her every day,” she said.
After 17 years in daycare, where she started as a teacher assistant and ended up as director, her daughter was in middle school and she decided it was “time to make the change.” She is now in her 16th year at Greenwood, which she says “is the best-kept secret in the district; there is no better place to work.”
Kowalski has taught mostly in first grade, but worked for a few years in second grade. Under the “looping” strategy, which keeps classes intact for two years, she moved with her first graders to second grade. Because many of the children do not have stable home lives, she says, “it provides huge amounts of stability for the children. It improves their behavior and test scores, and they can hit the ground learning in September because they know your expectations.” Looping also “builds good family relationships.” This year, the third grade looped into the fourth grade.
In a school with a transitory population that is largely black and Latino, a sizable percentage of students having a first language other than English, and many parents who speak only French Creole or Spanish, she says, “we face a lot of challenges but the staff truly pulls together and works as a team to meet all of the challenges we face.”
“That award wasn’t just for me; it was for the whole building,” Kowalski says. “You can’t be a great teacher if don’t have a great support system. I have other teachers that believe in what I do, and I couldn’t do it without them.”
About teaching first grade, she says, “Nothing is more rewarding than having a child coming into your classroom not knowing how to read and leave being a good reader.”
“She’s a great teacher, and she has a great relationship with her students and her parents,” Ivanisik says. “She can have wonderful conversations about students who are over achievers, or those difficult conversations that a child needs a little more support and help, because there is that mutual trust and respect.”
Not surprisingly, Kowalski says, “I love my job. If I could sum myself up in one sentence: I get up every morning ready to come to work. I love, love, love my work.”
Greenwood Elementary teacher Dayna Kowalski holds her “Teacher as Hero” award while standing with Robyn Ivanisik, Greenwood’s climate and culture specialist. Ivanisik nominated Kowalski for the honor.,
