LifeChanger of the Year Nominee Profile

Leah Moak was nominated by her principal, Tamara Zylla.

Few teachers develop the professional skills by the end of their career that Leah Moak possesses as a teacher with many years still before her. She is innovative and consistently seeks to meet the needs of her students. Mrs. Moak thrives in challenging academic situations. She works diligently to differentiate her lessons for students while making every effort to ensure that they maintain rigor and build students’ capacity for independence as they move toward mastery of their grade level standards. Mrs. Moak knows her students’ instructional needs and interests far better than most educators and is well-equipped with strategies and skills from resources such as Reading Reconsidered (Lemov, 2016) and Teaching the Core Skills of Listening and Speaking (Palmer, 2014). Therefore, she is able to keep her students not only highly engaged, but excited about learning. As a result, Mrs. Moak consistently sees growth both academically and behaviorally. As a former literacy coach and one who is continuously striving to learn about current trends in education, she eagerly attends any workshop or learning opportunity that comes her way and seeks professional development when she determines an area of growth for herself instructionally.

Mrs. Moak is also an avid reader of educational literature to ensure that she is up to date on current educational trends. She is well-versed in the works of Doug Fisher and Nancy Frey, two of today’s top educational researchers who have written countless books and articles about teaching English Language Arts in the era of the new California standards. Mrs. Moak is an expert in ELA instruction. She is also one who desires to use the latest educational instructional techniques; thus, she skillfully integrates technology as she implements techniques such as developmental word study, cross-curricular writing, and explicit reading comprehension strategy instruction. In addition, she regularly uses close reading, Question Answer Relationships, QAR (Raphael, 1986), and Thinking Maps to enhance her instruction and build students’ ability to think critically. Furthermore (and perhaps most importantly), Mrs. Moak is an educator that is adept at constructing lessons that require students to stretch themselves to reach the synthesis/creating level of Bloom Taxonomy and DOK 3 and 4. She recognizes the significance of “the struggle,” which ensures that she is developing students who are capable of prospering in the 21st century society. This is reflected in her 2015-16 SBAC test scores, which exceeded both her administrator and her own expectations.

Mrs. Moak is an educator who thrives on professional development, but also on supporting others as they grow professionally. Her expertise, feedback, and support are always welcomed and appreciated by her peers to ensure consistent, top-notch instruction school-wide. Mrs. Moak regularly welcomes her administrator into her classroom for demonstration lessons, modeling, and coaching. She seeks advice often and finds no shame in asking questions, which enables her to continually provide the best possible education for her students. Mrs. Moak is one who flourishes with “real time” feedback and greatly appreciates insight and guidance during instruction. She is one who acts immediately on feedback and thrives on academic conversations about instruction. Over the course of her career, she has had many coaching conversations during her lessons. In addition to improving instruction, these conversations also demonstrate to her administrators, and more importantly, to her students, that she truly embraces a growth mindset, which is essential to being an extraordinary educator and expert learner. For the past two years, she has supported her colleagues with planning, grading, and instructional strategies in ELA. As a result of this effective collaboration, all classrooms school-wide have achieved at levels that surpassed those of the district and state. In addition to supporting her school-site colleagues, Mrs. Moak opens her classroom to teachers from across the district and Cerritos College Teacher Trac program. Many teachers have had opportunities to observe and discuss instruction with her and have taken fantastic ideas and strategies back to their own students. She is also a P2P trainer and Thinking Map trainer. Additionally, she has led the district’s summer institute, spent a couple years as a district and school-site instructional coach, and has been both a BTSA support provider as well as a master teacher many times. In short, she has had numerous opportunities to shape new and veteran teachers.  This willingness to help others shows that she is a team player who seeks a “standard of excellence; nothing less” for all students, not just her own. Any district would be fortunate to have such an educator in its ranks.

Mrs. Moak practices what she preaches. She is always willing to take risks and try anything new that is thrown her way. She's an active learner who is consistently seeking the most effective means to reach her students, so she is always considering new ideas. Student autonomy, structured group interactions, feedback, rigor, and collaborative conversations are among the powerful educational practices into which Mrs. Moak has delved over the course of her career. Students have learned how to productively work in groups, to agree and disagree with one another, elaborate on each other’s ideas, and how to provide evidence for their claims. They have also gained incredible insight into writing informational essays and crafting well-developed arguments in addition to creating their own rubrics. This year, Mrs. Moak joined her colleagues in striving to develop a growth mindset in student, as well as in a study of Universal Design for Learning. She fully embraced UDL immediately and was the one who led the charge with implementation. She faithfully planned with her administrator and colleagues and frequently reminded teachers that the goal was to “remove the barriers.”  Mrs. Moak truly understands the importance of ensuring that students are active participants in their education. She is a champion for developing capable students. While the challenges of teaching students how to become “expert learners” is quite evident, Mrs. Moak understands how important that it is that she strives to cultivate this, for she desires to develop 21st century learners who are ready for whatever their future college or career paths may offer them.

There are not enough superlatives in the English language to describe Mrs. Moak’s character and personal attributes. Her positive demeanor and good nature bring joy to any staff or team with whom she works. She is exponentially adored by parents, her fellow teachers, and site administrators. She is a natural born leader who can “roll with the punches” and has a “let’s do this!” attitude. Her passion for teaching is evident in all that she does. Despite any challenges her students may face, she continuously believes that they can achieve at high levels; thus, she holds them to rigorous standards and expectations for academics and behavior. Mrs. Moak teaches from the heart and is able to make great gains with even the most challenging students as a result. That's because they know she loves them and will do all she can to ensure they succeed.

Mrs. Moak is always willing to do “whatever it takes” to move students. She possesses a growth mindset that not only encompasses her students, but also herself and others. She is acutely aware that everyone can change and acts regularly upon that assumption. Mrs. Moak is collaborative, mindful, thoughtful, and highly professional. She is truly a role model for others and a veritable representation of all that a 21st century educator should be.