LifeChanger of the Year Nominee Profile

Mary Day was nominated by an anonymous student.

"It was my first day of 8th grade at Mount Horeb Middle School, and I went to my homeroom to start my day," said the student. "I walked in to find my sweet, kind, and calm teacher, Ms. Day. My sister had her as a teacher and told me she was so kind. Ms. Day was just as kind as my sister had said, but where she really made an impact was in math."

"I wasn't an especially strong math student. I always struggled a little bit and only partially enjoyed the subject," said the student. "In the past, math consisted of learning from the textbook, practicing, doing homework, and then taking a quiz or test, but Ms. Day had a different approach. Instead of making us read and do work from the boring textbook every day, she created activities that kept us engaged. She would have us make little 'books' full of information or create slideshows with shapes from our environment. These activities made the class fun and kept it from getting repetitive and boring. In addition to the class being fun, I learned better than I had in the past and truly learned to understand some of the objectives better."

"Another thing that I loved about Ms. Day's classroom was that I could always count on it to be a calm space," said the student. "I remember she had all the desks in the front, and in the back, there was space where we could complete activities and spread out around the room. My favorite way to use the space is by playing the game Frogger. The one where you all close your eyes and stick out your tongue to 'kill' the person. It was everyone's favorite game, so she let us play often."

"At the end of eighth grade, my parents and I were deciding what high school I should attend," said the student. "I was a competitive swimmer, so Ms. Day told me that when I decided which school I was going to, I should let her know so she could keep up with my swimming, which made me feel good because it felt like she cared. During freshman year, Ms. Day left Mount Horeb, so we went to the middle school to say goodbye to her and thank her for being one of our favorite teachers. Sophomore year came around, and I decided to switch schools, but I didn't know that Ms. Day had taken a job there. I remember seeing an email from her, and she said she saw my name on a paper, so she decided to reach out and see how I was doing and continued to check in throughout the year from time to time."

"All of this showed me how much she cared about my classmates and me," said the student. "She tried to do everything she possibly could to create the best learning environment and space while teaching us to have fun."