The staff and students at Dr. Losier are thrilled to announce that Mrs. Kierstead has been recognized at the provincial level for her superb leadership and her commitment to meeting the needs of every student at Dr, Losier Middle School. Those of us who have worked with Mrs. Kierstead over the past decade are well aware that her leadership has been exemplary and we are all delighted to that this has been acknowledged through this award. The Minister’s Excellence in Teaching Award recognizes educators showing exceptional skills in: ·        Educational Leadership and Professional Growth ·        Instructional Practice and Assessment ·        Inclusive Practice ·        Positive Learning Environment .” Both as an educator and as an educational leader she exemplifies why this is a profession and not a “job”. She displays a rare gift for supporting the leadership skills of her staff but never hesitates to provide direct leadership when that is what is most beneficial to our staff and students. As gifted as Mrs. Kierstead is at developing a shared leadership model she truly shines in how she has developed our staff into a flexible professional learning community. Staff stated, time and again regarding her strengths that, "She is the most professional person I know." "She is always striving to make the school a better place." "She leads by example." "She is always pushing us forward as a professional learning community." During her time here at Dr. Losier Middle School we have implemented numerous improvements and innovative programs. Each of these has been a direct result of Mrs. Kierstead's leadership. A complete list of ten years of innovations would be impossible to include but most recently we have worked extensively on common assessments, Universal Design for Learning, and Differentiation. We continue to work on developing proficiency with reading and writing workshops, we continue cross curricular planning, data driven math interventions, , and school wide interventions in math and language arts. In every case, the initiatives that she has pursued are designed to inspire our staff to a greater level of professionalism and to respond to their need for further learning so that we can reach our goal of being the best school possible. Each of these is student focused to meet their educational, emotional, and social needs. The relationship she has developed with every student in this building is easily measured. They are willing to come to her and share their best moments and their worst. She is familiar to them as a classroom teacher, not simply as an administrator. She can often be seen after school sitting with a small group of students offering them remediation or support to complete homework/ projects/ and assignments. She calls home and touches base with numerous parents in her role as administrator but also in her role as a classroom teacher. The models we use for lesson planning and for including multiple intelligences as well as differentiation are the models she uses in her classroom as well. She regularly engages her students in studies of relevant local events and they are encouraged to become critical thinkers and to develop meaningful opinions of events locally, nationally, and internationally. Her use of “real world” information engages students and encourages them to explore ideas.     Mrs., Kierstead’s nomination was unanimously supported by the staff and we are very excited that she has been recognized for this award. Please join us in congratulating her on this well deserved recognition.