Brentwood Middle School Teacher Wins State Honor

SACRAMENTO – Traci Kemper, the newly-chosen California League of Middle Schools (CLMS) 2008 State Middle Grades Educator of the Year, has a saying: You can’t fill a child’s mind until you have filled their soul. During the eight years she has taught language arts and social studies at Edna Hill Middle School in Brentwood, Calif., she has also played a pivotal role in establishing supportive programs for all students at her site, filling their souls so they may find success in middle school and in life.

In describing winning the award, which was announced in front of nearly 3,000 educators at the CLMS 2008 Annual Conference in Sacramento on March 1, 2008, Kemper said, “It was a little uncomfortable because I don’t love the spotlight. But I felt very emotional, very blessed, very fortunate to be a teacher. This award did not just belong to me, but to everyone at Edna Hill Middle School.”

Get Kemper talking about students and teaching, however, and any reluctance at being singled out for an honor dissolves into passion for the power of education to change young lives.

“I started teaching because, as a kid, I did not have the best home life and school was a safe place for me; school was a place I could dream,” Kemper said. “On back-to-school night, I always tell the parents that if their children leave my classroom feeling like they can do and be anything in this world, then I have succeeded. I am there to build their dreams and to teach them how to achieve them.”

This dedication to providing students with adult support during the critical middle school years – a time when students undergo enormous physical and emotional developmental changes and make decisions that will influence whether they will stay in high school or drop out – led Kemper to develop a series of programs to build students’ confidence and academic abilities.

With her colleagues, she learned about another school’s idea for an individual learning plan (ILP) for each student at a CLMS conference several years ago. Kemper adapted and expanded the idea for Edna Hill Middle School. Today, each student has an adult advocate who works with the student through all three years of middle school. Each student has an ILP that contains information such as test scores, career aspirations, quarterly self-ratings based on Sean Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens and more that accompanies him or her throughout the middle school years. “It is a history of how they’ve grown and changed and the success they’ve had,” Kemper explained.

The ILP is also used in student-led conferences so that students can present to their parents both their academic portfolios and their development as young people. Parent participation in the student-led conferences has since jumped from 30 percent to over 90 percent. Administrators sit in for those few parents or guardians who cannot or will not participate in the conferences.

Kemper also developed the PASS, short for “Passing on Apparel for Student Success.” In the popular program, all students at Edna Hill can obtain free fashionable outfits on campus that have been donated by local department stores, removing any stigma for participation and ensuring economically disadvantaged students feel confident in today’s clothing-conscious culture.

Her Evening STAR Academies bring parents and students to school for four nights of games and learning in language arts, math, science and social science to better prepare all students for success on the STAR tests. Students play parents in fun, test-taking strategy games; parents learn how just feeding kids protein-rich breakfasts and ensuring they get nine hours of sleep per night for the week prior to testing correlates with a 10-point test score gain.

Kemper’s award occurred as part of the CLMS 2008 Annual Conference, a professional development event held February 28-March 2, 2008, in Sacramento.

Edna Hill Middle School Principal Kirsten Jobb expressed delight in Kemper’s selection as state educator of the year. “Traci absolutely personifies what is excellent about middle school education,” Jobb said. “She is a leader at our school in advocating for students, making connections with every child, and bringing out the best of what every child is able to do. We’re so proud that she is able to represent what Edna Hill, our district and our community all stand for.”

Peter Murphy, executive director of CLMS, said, “Traci Kemper is an exceptional educator who makes all of us in middle level education proud to be part of this profession.”

Kemper was first selected by a regional panel of educators to be the 2008 CLMS Middle Grades Educator of the Year for region 4, which includes the counties of Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo and Solano. At the CLMS 2008 Annual Conference, the trustees of CLMS then chose Kemper from among 11 regional Educators of the Year to represent the entire state. In addition to the 11 regional winners, 94 additional educators throughout California were regional finalists.

Along with the 10 other regional CLMS 2008 Educators of the Year, Kemper was awarded a free trip to the CLMS Summer Institute in Maui, July 8-11, 2008, courtesy of Prentice Hall.

But the real award for Kemper comes in her daily interactions with students. “As teachers, we wonder why some kids are not listening or why they’re not trying,” Kemper said. “But we don’t know what’s happening at home. We need to be so careful about how we treat students. School needs to be the place where they are safe, the place where they are built up.”

The California League of Middle Schools is a 501c3 nonprofit organization that provides association memberships, professional development and other resources to middle grades educators so their students may experience academic and life success.

Contacts:

Katie Winchell, Director of Communications
California League of Middle Schools
Phone: (800) 326-1880, ext. 23
Email: editor [at] clms.net
Digital images of Traci Kemper available

Kirsten Jobb, Principal
Edna Hill Middle School
140 Birch Street, Brentwood, CA 94513
Phone: (925) 513-6440, ext. 4075
Email: kjobb [at] brentwood.k12.ca.us