GBHS' Henderson named Reading Teacher of the Year

Courtesy Photo Donna Henderson (right) receives a bouquet of flowers from Principal Sylvan Ladner and assistant principal Angie Donlan for being named the county's Reading Teacher of the Year.

Santa Rosa County District Schools, in conjunction with Just Read, Florida 2008, named Gulf Breeze High School teacher Donna Henderson as its High School Reading Teacher of the Year.

Henderson has taught for over 26 years in the Santa Rosa District at all levels in Exceptional Student Education and holds certification in numerous areas including reading.

Henderson taught regular education intensive reading classes, one block of READ 180 and three less intensive reading classes of fluent students.

She has been active on the Reading Leadership Team in participating in GBHS' study of Marzano's Classroom Instruction That Works.

Henderson's SRI and READ 180 data prove her success as a classroom teacher. At Christmas, her students averaged an increase of 31 Lexile points. For the month of February her students averaged 60,000 words read. The range of words read by her students bottomed at 27,277 to a top score of 116,946 words read. Her students also averaged improving their correct words per minute on the FORF by 5.5 words.

This year, Henderson has been active in various research based programs. She and another teacher have implemented Concept Boxes on themes such as Struggles and Perseverance, Justice and Relationships. They received $1,500 from the School Advisory Committee to purchase books for their classroom libraries.

When a professor at UWF learned of GBHS' 54 percent success rate on the October retakes, she wrote a FLARE grant to purchase more books for the Concept Boxes. Even though the grant was rescinded by FLARE due to budget cuts, her classes received another $1,500 of these books from UWF in February.

Another reading program implemented at Gulf Breeze High School has been the Teen Trendsetters Reading Mentors. Henderson's fifth period class was trained in October by the regional coordinator. Her class was paired with Robin Burker's third grade class at Gulf Breeze Elementary. Each week, Henderson's students prepare with the Tutor Manual which emphasizes before, during and after reading strategies and practicing reading the trade book they give to their tutee each week.

The following day, these students partner with their third grader and read their lesson in Brainstorming! and their trade book. Her high school mentors have learned leadership skills as well as relating they have improved their own study skills in other classes.