Dwyer Awards 2024: Seven teachers honored as best of the best. What to know about them

WEST PALM BEACH — The 2024 Dwyer Awards for Excellence in Education were presented to seven teachers Tuesday night at the Kravis Center to honor their spirit and dedication to Palm Beach County's students.

The best of the best represent Liberty Park Elementary, Seminole Trails Elementary, Pioneer Park Elementary, Palm Springs Middle, Bak Middle School of the Arts, Emerald Cove Middle and Olympic Heights High.

Among this year's winners is an educator who re-established a school step team and won state recognition for its performances, a school counselor who helped fund a student's safety patrol trip when her family needed a hand and a teacher who moved from Jamaica as a child who focuses on the ability of every child to learn.

Superintendent Mike Burke addressed the group from the Kravis Center stage, congratulating the school district's slate of winners for "making success unavoidable for students."

"The teacher is the sole most important ingredient for the success of the kids," Burke said. "Our finalists tonight are the cream of the crop and part of an elite group of educators.

Speaking directly to the finalists, he said "you all and your colleagues are the reason we're able to provide the highest quality of education in Palm Beach."

What are the Dwyer Awards for Excellence in Education?

The Dwyer Awards were launched in 1984 to honor outstanding educators from Palm Beach County public and private schools. All of the 2024 winners teach at district-run public schools.

Supported by the Economic Council of Palm Beach County, the annual awards program highlights exemplary teaching in the community and supports educators with financial awards for their excellence in the classroom.

Award recipients receive $3,500 and a personalized crystal award. Finalists receive $500 and a personalized certificate.

Bill Dwyer, the son of William T. Dwyer, opened the ceremony by recognizing all of the finalists and educators in the audience. Dwyer said his father was known to profess that "better schools make a better county."

Dwyer added that his father would be amazed by the "caliber of the educators" present in the room and "humbled to have his name associated with this event and all it stands for."

Winners of 2024 Dwyer awards

Here are this year's winners and the categories each educator won:

• Early Elementary Education: Nathalee English, Liberty Park Elementary

• Elementary Education: Lois Gray, Seminole Trails Elementary

• Middle School Education: Shakendra Moorer, Bak Middle School of the Arts

• Senior High Education: Kimberly Coyle, Olympic Heights High

• STEM Education: Claudia Chavarria, Pioneer Park Elementary

• Exceptional Education: Jessica Maharrey, Palm Springs Middle School

• Student Support and Advancement: Mary Jannell Leatherman, Emerald Cove Middle School

Early Elementary Education: Nathalee English

English spends her days with energetic 3- and 4-year-old students at Liberty Park Elementary in Greenacres. Several of her students have communication issues or emotional regulation challenges that she must get creative to address.

Recently, her classes put on an "alphabet parade" with the school's kindergarten students and a "storybook character dress-up parade," where she and other teachers encouraged their students to create outfits that reflected their favorite fictional characters.

"My students did an incredible job, and students from first grade to fifth grade cheered us on. This did so much to improve the confidence of our early learners," English said.

Outside the classroom, English maintains the school's garden and creates a place of tranquility even as the world continues to change rapidly around her. Entering her 10th year of teaching, English said she's excited to meet the next generation of leaders.

"I believe that every child has the opportunity to bring something unique and special to the world, and my role as a teacher is to give them the tools to cultivate their gardens of knowledge," she said.

Elementary Education: Lois Gray

Gray realized from a young age that education was the key ingredient in creating a successful life.

When she was just 8 years old, she came to the United States with her parents and five siblings from Jamaica. Her childhood was full of opportunities to appreciate education as she watcher her parents take night classes to get ahead in the American job market.

Now a fourth-grade teacher at Seminole Trails Elementary in West Palm Beach, Gray shares the philosophy that has guided her past 25 years in education: All children can learn. They are our future.

Gray hopes to pass on her passion for education to the next generations through her "Future Teachers of Tomorrow" club, which students join to learn about how to become an educator. Her club has visited Florida Atlantic and Lynn universities to help the third-, fourth- and fifth-grade students become familiar with college campuses and what it's like to be a professor.

But the club goes beyond that. Gray's group has created holiday greeting cards for the elderly, collected necessities to send to Floridians impacted by Hurricane Ian and collected food for the Palm Beach County Food Bank.

Middle School Education: Shakendra Moorer

Moorer knows the power of a performance.

After all, she is responsible for building Bak Middle School's radio broadcast program and for revitalizing its step team. Moorer took the step team from a handful of students struggling to perform together to a 30-member group that has been honored as the top-scoring middle school team in Florida.

Within the team, she created a "big sister" mentoring program that has helped girls involved feel more connected to and responsible for each other.

As a 12-year educator and the media and communications teacher at Bak, Moorer cherishes the moments where her students have found passion for journalism and succeeded. This year, the school's radio broadcast program won several awards from the Florida Scholastic Press Association at its state conference in Orlando.

"I make it my mission to learn more about my students daily. I believe it is important to see students as individuals and not just bodies in the classroom," she said. "It is essential that as educators we help students to develop a growth mindset and innovative thinking while understanding their culture and what makes them THEM."

Senior High Education: Kimberly Coyle

Acting, theater and musical theater are all best done together on stage. So the change to virtual teaching was deeply disruptive for drama students and even for Coyle, who had been teaching for 13 years, at the start of the pandemic.

"Theater is about the love of a live community, and virtual learning felt more like a séance; having to call a students’ name over again only to be staring at a video of their ceiling fan. 'Bueller? Buller?' " she said, referencing the 1986 film "Ferris Bueller's Day Off."

But students at Olympic Heights came back better than ever under her leadership.

This year, her students' production of "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time" was one of just two plays from across the state chosen to tour and perform with the Florida State Thespian Festival. Nearly 30 students traveled to Tampa to put on the play for 2,000 fellow theater-lovers.

In addition to her work directly with students, Coyle is the producer of Olympic Heights' "Mane Event," a showcase of fine arts students' work that is designed to foster understanding and respect across musical disciplines and art mediums.

STEM Education: Claudia Chavarria

Trying to understand math brings up a lot of emotions for students, especially those in Chavarria's accelerated math programs at Pioneer Park Elementary in Belle Glade.

As an educator of eight years, Chavarria is trained to recognize when first-, fourth- and fifth-grade students are being too hard on themselves. She steps in immediately to encourage kids who become frustrated with math and uses her own story as a perfectionist and overthinker to help them understand that it's OK not to get everything on the first try.

"Our motto was, 'Mistakes are proof you are trying!' " she explained of her accelerated math classes. "This also helped build their math confidence and feel more comfortable with making mistakes."

And the data shows her approach is working: 100% of Chavarria's students scored at or above grade level on their statewide math assessments last year. Pioneer Park principal Sandra Moreau expects the same accomplishment this year.

"It is without any hesitation that I recommend Ms. Chavarria for the Dwyer Award," Moreau wrote. "She is an excellent employee and a great teacher."

Exceptional Education: Jessica Maharrey

Maharrey's students at Palm Springs Middle often have extreme difficulties communicating with others. In her five years of teaching, she's decided to transform her ESE classroom into an open one so her students interact with the full school community.

Her classes get to go trick-or-treating at Halloween to other classrooms, grow and deliver fresh herbs to teachers in the spring and collect team jerseys to be laundered, folded and put away at the end of sports seasons.

"These initiatives have helped my students gain independence and community within their school," she said. "When my students walk down the halls, they are known and loved. These activities have been instrumental in helping my children learn necessary life and communication skills, and gain independence."

Maharrey must also face the reality that many of her students' disabilities will impact their life expectancies. She said that if 30% to 50% of a student's life will be spent in school, she wants to make those years "as incredible as they can be."

Student Support and Achievement: Mary Jannell Leatherman

A graduate of Palm Beach County schools, Leatherman has been teaching for 30 years and works as a counselor at Emerald Cove Middle School in Wellington.

She said one of the highlights of her year is the school's "Pirate Prep" course, where she gets to work with incoming sixth graders to help ease the transition to middle school.

The extra support for students during a time of huge changes in their life has shown to be extremely successful, and the "Pirate Prep" model has been replicated at other schools.

As a first-generation college graduate herself, Leatherman now looks for ways to pay it forward to students who don't have the resources of other families. She recalled helping fund a student's safety patrol trip last year and helping the student's family afford shoes and a coat for the trip to celebrate her accomplishments.

"With self-confidence, they gain the ability to self-regulate their emotions from within and develop healthy positive relationships," Leatherman said of her students. "Every student that rises from the circumstances, situations and outside influences beyond their control becomes a leader and an inspiration for others."

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2024 finalists for Dwyer Awards for Excellence in Education

Grow Up Great: Early Elementary Education

• Cathy Eckstein, Wellington Elementary

• Cindy Fakhoury, Lake Worth High-Little Trojans Preschool

• Heather Orloski, Citrus Cove Elementary

• Nathalee English, Liberty Park Elementary

Elementary Education

• Megan Betancourt, Sandpiper Shores Elementary

• Brandie Soto, Binks Forest Elementary

• Lois Gray, Seminole Trails Elementary

• David Allen-LoCaputo, Liberty Park Elementary

Middle School Education

• Shakendra Moorer, Bak Middle

• Kristen Karvonen, Palm Springs Middle

• Amy Finneran, Boca Raton Middle

• Shannon Solis, Village Academy

Senior High Education

• Nayyat Bogosyan, Spanish River High

• Kimberly Coyle, Olympic Heights High

• Stacy Stephens-Miller, Atlantic High

• Wendy Dublin, Park Vista High

STEM Education

• Cheryl Huey, Jupiter Middle

• William Colman, Howell L. Watkins Middle

• Claudia Chavarria, Pioneer Park Elementary

• Molly Harding, Frontier Elementary

Exceptional Education

• Chelsey Carr, Lake Worth Middle

• Rita Wicks, Lantana Elementary

• Julie Bee, Allamanda Elementary

• Jessica Maharrey, Palm Springs Middle

Student Support and Achievement

• Olga Middleton, Alexander W. Dreyfoos School of the Arts

• Lori Landes, Omni Middle

• Jessica Bayani, Palm Springs Middle

• Mary Jannell Leatherman, Emerald Cove Middle

Katherine Kokal is a journalist covering education at The Palm Beach Post. You can reach her at kkokal@pbpost.com. Help support our work; subscribe today!

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: 2024 Dwyer Awards honor teachers, school staff in Palm Beach County