LifeChanger of the Year Nominee Profile

Teresa Tanner was nominated by her superintendent, Carl Skinner.

Over the course of Ms. Tanner's career, she has been a long standing member of the Council of Administrators of Special Education (CASE), Missouri CASE, Council for Exceptional Children (CEC), Division for Early Childhood of CEC, and the Kansas City Local Administrators of Special Education (KC-LASE). During her time as an early childhood/special education teacher, Ms. Tanner also worked as a Project Construct Curriculum Facilitator. She provided curriculum training to hundreds of teachers going through five-day curriculum foundation training.  She enjoyed working with colleagues across the state of Missouri and sharing ways Project Construct could be implemented in a special education preschool classroom. Ms. Tanner was also selected to work with Missouri’s Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) staff to create the first ever Missouri Early Learning Standards in the area of Science.  

Ms. Tanner was a key factor to the HMC-1 District bond that voters supported to build a new Early Childhood Center.  The new building was a design build that focused on the purpose of educating HMC-1 children vs. using a generic blueprint.  This required someone who knew and understood the needs of both general education and special education early childhood students. Ms. Tanner was selected to work alongside the design architect to create a unique blueprint plan that met the needs of the littlest learners and their families.

During the entire process of the design build phase of the new facility, Ms. Tanner democratically led teams to provide input, such as what teachers needed in their classroom learning environment, what therapists needed, what family programs were needed, etc.  The facility was judged by the Mid-America Regional Council.  They named it a Sustainable Success Story in 2010.  In 2011, the Design Excellence Award judges in metro Kansas City also honored the center with a Gold Award in the Contemporary Architecture category and a Bronze Award in the Green category.

Over the course of Ms. Tanner's time as a Special Education leader, she has faced district budget cuts that impacted special education.  These cuts did not limit her ability to meet the needs of special education students.  The district was faced with closing an elementary school that held the elementary Life Skills classrooms.  This program was moved to another school. Ms. Tanner pushed up her sleeves, toured the new space, made a list of facility changes that were required to support the children in the Life Skills classroom, and collaborated with the Executive Director of Buildings and Grounds to adapt the learning environment for the learners in the Life Skills classrooms.

Throughout her career, Ms. Tanner has excelled in writing grants for the district that support the needs of diverse learners. Through writing grants, she brought in several programs which increased the District’s ability to serve preschool students, including the Missouri Preschool Project and Head Start. These additional grant funds increased the number of students who had equitable access to high-quality preschool. She was also often selected to sit on DESE’s grant reading teams that awarded school district funds for preschool.  She encouraged her special education staff to seek grants that supported the diverse needs of their students. Ms. Tanner connected them to available grant opportunities from the District’s Foundation teacher grants (i.e., DonorsChoose grants). Many sensory materials and equipment were purchased through these grants by teachers who were guided by Ms. Tanner.

Ms. Tanner started her journey in education as a paraprofessional at the Freda Markley Early Childhood Center working in a blended classroom of students with and without special education needs.  During this time, she became a quasi-lead paraprofessional in the building, often times mentoring new paraprofessionals.  Currently, as the director of student services, she finds innovative ways to conduct professional development training for paraprofessionals. She continues to be an instruction leader to a wide variety of staff ranging from paraprofessionals, to special education teachers, to therapists, to assessment team members.

As a distributive leader, Ms. Tanner knows the importance of “growing your own” staff and supporting them while they pursue the field of special education.  During her time as an early childhood administrator, she lovingly required all 12 of her teachers to have dual certification in both early childhood and early childhood special education.  The dual certification gave her teachers a holistic perspective of working with every kind of learner in their classrooms. The general education certification gave teachers the skills to be the curriculum expert for their classrooms, while the special education certification gave them additional strategies to accommodate students with special needs.

As a building principal and director of student services, she has inspired and motivated numerous special education teachers to transition into the role of Local Educational Agency (LEA) representative as process coordinators, allowing them to see a more global perspective of special education outside of the classroom.  Process coordinator leaders continue to ensure the case managers in their buildings are in compliance with IDEA. Ms. Tanner is currently working with the District's special education coordinator by mentoring her and sharing all of the components of MO DESE state reports, SPED finance, compliance, etc. Supporting staff to succeed in their current positions, as well as supporting staff with their long term goals, is very rewarding to Ms. Tanner.

With the support of the student services team, Ms. Tanner planned Special Education/English Language Learner (SPELL) equity walks throughout the district.  The information gained from the SPELL walks determined that co-teaching was an area needed to support both general education and special education students.  Teacher teams were identified, and professional development centered around co-teaching occurred in March of 2020. Then, a world pandemic closed schools down for the remainder of the 2019-20 school year.  The district stayed “virtual only” for the first eight months of the 2020-21 school year, but Ms. Tanner and the student services team did not let a pandemic deter the co-teaching initiative from being implemented.  Virtual co-teaching was implemented with success.  Survey results (from teachers) for the first year of co-teaching indicated that 90.9% support co-teaching, 95.6% would refer co-teaching to a friend, and 90.5% feel they had the support needed to be successful. Ms. Tanner is constantly finding ways for special education students to be inclusive in the general education environment.      

The pandemic also brought other challenges to serving students with special needs.  While the students, teachers, and therapists had a device ready for them to connect to instruction at home, the paraprofessionals were not equipped with a device to provide assistance. Ms. Tanner worked collaboratively with the technology department to get iPad devices to the paraprofessional staff, along with the necessary training they needed to support special education students virtually.

Ms. Tanner is the definition of a servant-leader. She spends countless hours building positive relationships and rapport with students, classroom teachers, and parents of students with disabilities.  She always lends a hand when touring classrooms (i.e., helping a teacher create the best learning environment for students with disabilities, assisting students in washing their hands after a very fun, messy art activity, or deescalating a student who is having an emotional breakdown). Ms. Tanner volunteers her time to serve as a Board member on the Community Assistance Council (CAC), a community organization that provides assistance to families struggling with food insecurity, clothing needs, homelessness, emergency rent or utility assistance, hygiene items, diapers or pull-ups, and medicine or medical devices. As Board secretary, Ms. Tanner has guided the CAC staff in offering classes to families that will support/coach them into having a stable home, (i.e., budgeting, building credit, setting educational goals, connecting to mental, physical, and emotional help, and eviction prevention). Occasionally, Ms. Tanner finds time to work with her husband on rehabbing houses, many for people with disabilities or disabled veterans.

Ms. Tanner was the very first recipient of the Oak Park High School scholarship for an outstanding student who was pursuing a bachelor’s in education.  This scholarship was voted on and endorsed by the entire teaching staff of her high school. 

Ms. Tanner has made it her lifetime mission to ensure children with special education needs are included, supported, and encouraged in the general education classroom. She shares her story of being that student in elementary school who always volunteered to tutor peers in the hallway who struggled with reading or math, to being the positive cheerleader who encouraged her peers to those with special needs in school activities.

“Ms. Tanner has had a passion for education focused on prekindergarten and special education since 1991 – 30 years.   Her dedication and perseverance is evident as she worked her way from being a paraprofessional, to a teacher, to a principal, to a coordinator, to a director," said Skinner.

Ms. Tanner has earned several degrees, including Master’s and Specialist’s degrees in Administration. Recently, she went back to school and acquired her Special Education Administration certificate.