Community Corner

Meet CamCo Teacher of the Year Sandy Carro

After switching from teaching gifted students to working with basic-skills kids, Oaklyn teacher Sandy Carro is behind double-digit standardized test score improvements.

Sandy Carro is one of the most committed teachers in the Oaklyn Public School; beloved of her basic skills classes, a leader among her colleagues and the 2012 Camden County teacher of the year.

Just don’t ask her to be comfortable with the idea.

“I sit at the county roundtables with the teachers of the year, and hear their stories, and we all think, ‘Wow,’” Carro told Patch.

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Principal Jennifer Boulden called Carro “a well-rounded educator” and her “go-to teacher.” She said Carro is known within the district not only for her leadership but as someone who “donates a lot of her time, a lot of her funds” to the community. 

“She’s the Oaklyn Education Association president and has helped maintain a very positive culture within the building,” Boulden said.

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“You have to have a relationship with students in order for them to respect you, and Sandy develops a very, very positive, professional relationship with her students,” she said. 

‘Every child learns differently’

After teaching gifted and talented students in the school for four years, there was an opportunity for Carro to switch to basic skills classes, and she took it. It was an adjustment, she said, but many of the same teaching techniques work in both types of classrooms.

“The students in gifted needed that differentiation, needed that push, and the children in basic skills needed that same thing, just in a different direction,” Carro said.

One of her most successful classroom initiatives has been the use of Tween Tribune, an online news site geared for adolescents, the comments section of which she uses to evoke critical analysis. Another, Study Island focuses on the Common Core Standards, and offers printable worksheets and online study skills for the annual examination.

“Every child learns differently, and every child needs different things, needs nurturing,” she said. All educators “have to be the ultimate jugglers, not just academically.”

To illustrate her point, Carro talked about helping the parent of an English as a Second Language (ESL) student access an online pay stub to apply for an assistance program. Completing that task required overcoming linguistic, cultural and technological barriers.

Not only are such challenges a regular part of the job, she said, but they provide teachable moments as well.

“When students see you doing things like that, that reach beyond the classroom, they see someone who is a well-rounded individual,” Carro said, “and I feel it helps them become more well-rounded as well.”

Double-digit results

It’s also important to note that Carro’s methods get results. Even if they do not reach statewide proficiency levels, students in her classes are producing double-digit increases in their standardized test scores. In fact, 70 percent of them did so last year.

Numbers like those will start to be rewarded in the new EE4NJ teacher rating system, said Collingswood (and Oaklyn) school district Chief Performance Officer Matthew Genna, “whereas with the old system they may not have been. 

“If a student did not reach proficiency, that was all that was noticed,” Genna said. “Now these specific measurements of growth will be published and rewarded and celebrated, which is a wonderful thing.”

“I’m happy that we’ll be going to the growth model that shows them at different stages throughout the year [in 2013],” Carro said.

Carro is also the third teacher of the year from the Oaklyn school to win countywide Teacher of the Year honors since 2001. The 2011 Oaklyn teacher of the year, ESL teacher Elizabeth Solowey, actually nominated her for the honor:

In the years I’ve worked with her, she has always been a strong advocate for her students and their successes. Her rapport with the students is warm, compassionate, and respectful…she challenges her students and helps them become better learners. …She is not only an asset to this district; she is an asset to the profession!

Carro’s message is simpler. She encourages teachers to reach beyond the classroom, to show students that “what matters is what makes you a well-rounded person and a productive member of society.”

Although Carro has graciously accepted the praises heaped upon her by her colleagues, when asked what she would most like her students to remember of her, she was direct.  

“I would like it to be said [by my students] that ‘she cared and she loved me,’” she said.


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