top teacher
Alumna Amber Damm has a vision to move students along the journey of education
Alumna Amber Damm, the 2009 Minnesota Teacher of the Year, describes her parents as the smartest people she knows. Still, her father merely tolerated high school, and her mother dropped out after 11th grade. Growing up near Beloit, Wisconsin, Damm tried to help her younger brother as he struggled to learn to read in the third grade. Even Damm, who excelled in school, says she didn’t have a very good educational experience until she enrolled in the college’s M.Ed. program. Today, she tries to provide a more positive experience for her seventh- and eighth-grade English and language arts students at Clara Barton Open School, a diverse, K–8 school that is one of only two open schools remaining in Minneapolis Public Schools.
At the University of Minnesota, Damm found inspiring faculty including Michael Graves (retired) and Rick Beach, who helped her “deconstruct the dead white guy canon” and integrate authors from different cultures into her own teaching. “I have readers at all levels in my 7/8 class,” says Damm. “My passion is teaching really rigorous and rich content in a way that every one of them grows.”
She’s encouraged in her work by husband Jeff Damm (M.Ed. ’98), a former teacher who is now a math tutor at Clara Barton and a landscape designer, and her stepdaughter, Mahalia, a freshman at Minneapolis South.
Damm earned a bachelor’s degree from North Central University, Minneapolis, where as a junior she mapped out an ambitious plan to gain admission to the University of Minnesota’s competitive M.Ed. program. At CEHD, she found herself among classmates who had attended far more prestigious institutions or already had master’s degrees and teaching experience. Though initially intimidated, she says she quickly realized that the high-caliber students were part of what made the program so powerful. She still maintains contact with others in her cohort, many of whom she hails as the best teachers in the state. “Being able to talk with other teachers and learn from them is a huge part of maintaining a career in teaching,” she says.
Damm was nominated for Teacher of the Year by Clara Barton parents Karen and Darryl Savage, who were amazed by how quickly she understood the needs and gifts of their two children, who were her students. Principal Steve De Lapp has seen Damm in action many times: “She has a vision of reaching every kid, no matter what they bring—whether they come into her classroom with strong skills as a learner, or whether they have lots of needs,” he explains. “She has an ability to find out what’s important to them and move them along on that journey of education.”
Story by Kara Rose | Photo by Justin Evidon | September 2010
