The WHAS-TV e.ON U.S. Excel Award was presented just five blocks away from WHAS11 Studios Wednesday afternoon. The Excel Team went to Coleridge-Taylor School, which is really kind of our neighborhood school.
Coleridge-Taylor has been a Montessori Elementary School for the last twenty years, and Wednesday, Gary Roedemeier made the short journey to West Chestnut to present the award to a teacher who is called the heart and soul of her school.
It's extraordinary when a teacher spends 31 years at the same school.
And that's why the excel WHAS11 presented to Sally Gamble is really an award for lifetime achievement.
She made the transition to the Montessori strategy in 1990 and Sally became a leader for an inner city school where good behavior and high achievement are a way of life.
Sally Gamble does a lot of heavy lifting at Coleridge-Taylor Montessori School but Wednsday she was lifting a $1000 check presented by the Excel Award Sponsor e.ON U.S. Her colleagues will tell you that Sally lead that way in making Montessori work.
“She's kind of our compass. She lets us know when we're veering from the Montessori path. She lets us know when we're making decisions that aren't best for children,” said one colleague.
The Excel presentation was one of the highlights of Sally Gamble's teaching career that covers more than three decades and thousands of students. And while this was a high point, Sally does most of her work down low on the floor.
“We do it at the child's level. Montessori is a wonderful way to teach. It rejuvenated my career,” said Gamble.
Montessori creates a community of learners, self learners and it creates moments like this from one of Sally's students.
“She helped from become the conscientious, assiduous and diligent young man of integrity that I am today,” said Jackson Baize, a former student.
Baize is just one example of a school full of attentive and well behaved students.
And for 30 years that has been the constant for Sally Gamble.
“The kids have never changed, ever in 31 years. They've never changed.
But also my family is here. The people that I worked with, many of them have been here since I came and we've literally grown up together,” said Gamble.
Montessori was not a career change but a course change for sally gamble a way to reach kids on their level.
And she is, in many ways their hero. As she left the Excel Awards and returned to her classroom, she walked into a gauntlet of cheers and applause for a teacher who is the heart and academic conscience of her school.
