2009 Award Winners

Camia Hoard
Frazier Preparatory Academy, Chicago
First Grade

When Barack Obama won the presidential election with his “Yes We Can” campaign, Camia Hoard finally saw her message to Chicago elementary school students reach national consciousness. A first-grade teacher on the West Side, Camia is leading her young students to success by challenging negative perceptions of urban education, and inspiring them to do things they didn’t believe they could. “My students are risk-takers, dreamers, doers!” she exclaims, and recently demonstrated her own “We Can” attitude by taking twenty-four Frazier Prep students to Washington for Inauguration Day. “When other teachers doubt their students’ abilities, Camia smiles and shows them what a student can accomplish if you believe in him or her,” explains Melanie Weber, Special Education Teacher at Frazier Prep. Her expectations for her youngest students are high, and she pushes them to raise their own expectations. As kindergarteners, her students were beginning to read and write; and now that she has followed those students to first grade, their test scores are higher than any other public school in the neighborhood. When asked to describe her special influence, she says only, “I vow to allow every child, and whatever world they dream of, to thrive in my classroom.”