Academy Star Awards 2009
We recently held the 3rd annual AutoSkill Academy Awards. This year, we held nominations for Academy Star Student of the Year and a new teacher category, Academy Innovator. From over 200 nation-wide nominations, we narrowed the contenders to a list of student and teacher finalists and the top winners, profiled below.
For all of us at AutoSkill, it’s very rewarding to learn about the creative work and commitment of Academy teachers and the incredible achievements of our students. Congratulations on another outstanding year!
Continue reading below to learn about our Student of the Year and Academy Innovator winners, or use the following links to read about the Academy Innovator finalists and student finalists in Academy of READING, Academy of MATH, and both Academy of READING and Academy of MATH categories.
Grand Prize Winners - Academy Star Student of the Year
Academy of READING
On the first day of ninth grade Reading, Jonathan wrote a note and gave it to me. It said, “I need help in this class.” I asked him why he needed help, as we had not started anything. He said, “No, I need help.” As time passed, I could see he was right. He was placed in a reading program designed to help kids with reading comprehension and fluency. The books started at about a 4th grade level and required much silent, sustained reading, partner reading, and teacher modeling of reading. One day, I read aloud a passage from The Secret Life of Bees. I asked Jonathan a question from it and he did not know the answer. Jonathan said, “I can’t read.”
We quickly routed him to an Academy of READING computer where he could begin his exercises on AutoSkill. He started on November 3, 2008. After working in the program for two months, I started to see a change in him. He was walking a little taller, shoulders a little broader. He became the hardest worker in the ninth grade. He set an example that his peers began to emulate and the race was on to try to do “better than Jonathan.” In March, he took a Cloze assessment of comprehension skills and he scored a 5.3 grade equivalency. He was thrilled and the success he felt was just the fuel he needed to make good grades in all his academic classes. Actually, on April 23, 2009, he made straight As on his progress report for the first time ever in his academic career. The other students still chase him and compete with him for trophies, grades, and progress.
Jonathan deserves to be recognized for his extreme hard work, his fidelity to the Academy of READING program, his positive attitude day after day, and his incredible will to conquer his reading problem.
Submitted by: Colleen Lagoueyte, Ware County High School
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Academy of MATH
I could not be any prouder of Tia if she were my own child! I just reviewed her post test and WOW! what a great improvement. Tia is a fourth grade student using the Academy of MATH. On August 22, 2008, Tia was performing at a Below Basic performance level for a fourth-grade student, with a 1.6 level. Based on her results, she was assigned a level 4 Individualized Training Program. In August, Tia worked very slowly and was struggling with her exercises.
After working with the teachers on some of the skills she was struggling with, Tia started requesting additional worksheets to carry home. Midway through her program, Tia started showing mastery and was eager to work on her lessons daily. When post tested in April 2009 Tia had moved to Proficient after training for 25 hours, She scored at level 4.7 demonstrating an increase of 3.1 levels; this was the most gains by a math student!
Submitted by: Cassandra Pressley, Kingstree Elementary School
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Grand Prize Winners - Academy Teacher of Excellence
Academy of READING 
This is a nomination for Elizabeth H. Allen. On a daily basis Beth guides her students’ reading progress by supporting all the Academy of READING skills in numerous ways.
Beth begins each class in the Academy constantly monitoring student progress through the use of the progress screens. Each time a student completes a skill, Beth immediately reviews their progress with them. She has taught each student how to analyze their mistakes and guides them in discovering what they can do to help themselves improve. She works with each student individually to help them find what works best for them. For some students just using the ‘magic ruler’ is enough to help them set their pace for success. When students are working on the comprehension sections, Beth uses their mistakes to help them understand their thinking and to teach test-taking skills in context.
To further help students become successful with the Academy, Beth backs up all the Academy skills in her classroom. Students’ phonological knowledge is enhanced through lessons such as Brand Name Phonics, Tricky Words, Making Words, and Power Word Vocabulary. She continuously reads and researches reading strategies for adolescents to find the most engaging lessons. To aid her students with their comprehension, she finds high-interest reading material and has her students perform drama activities to deepen and demonstrate their comprehension. Beth regularly provides reading time so students have a block of time to read their chosen material.
As Beth’s students progress through the Academy, their self-esteem appears to increase as their reading skills improve. This in turn reflects an improvement with their grades in all subjects. Through Beth’s expert coaching, most of her students progress quickly through the Academy and achieve not just one or two levels of growth, but three and four levels!! Most of her students exit the Academy not just on grade level, but above grade level!
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Academy of MATH
It is with great pride and enthusiasm that I am nominating Amy Bjork for your Teacher of Excellence Award for the Academy of MATH.
In her role as Instructional Specialist, Amy supports and guides the staff with her extensive curricular knowledge, strong interpersonal skills and leadership qualities. She consistently models both personal and professional behaviors, which are admired and acknowledged by our students, staff and parents. Along with her many other responsibilities, Amy has served as our campus coordinator for the AutoSkill program from the very beginning of our two year district implementation. With math as her curricular specialty, she has fully embraced the Academy and is dedicated to providing our students the tremendous academic gains that can only be achieved by ensuring consistent on-model implementation. Due to Amy’s exceptional guidance, our students have experienced outstanding academic math gains through the use of AutoSkill.
Our school has been the district elementary training site for new AutoSkill coordinators. We have had administrators observing Amy as she worked with our students on the AutoSkill program from the Aldine and Houston Independent School Districts. Although Amy works directly with our students in the Academy of MATH program, it should be noted that under Amy’s supervision, our campus was recently chosen to pilot the Oral Reading Fluency module for our district for the remainder of this school year.
Amy is an outstanding educator and an exemplary model to the profession. Her extraordinary work ethic and dedicated commitment to the AutoSkill Academy of MATH are truly exceptional. Based on my personal knowledge and experiences, I would highly recommend Amy Bjork for the very deserving honor of your Academy Teacher of Excellence Award in Math.
Submitted by: Kathy Morrison, Anderson Elementary
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