WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Williamstown Elementary School fifth-grade teacher Frani Miceli has been selected as the July Teacher of the Month. 

 

The Teacher of the Month series, in collaboration with Berkshire Community College, will run for the next 12 months and will feature distinguished teachers nominated by community members. You can nominate a teacher here. 

 

Miceli has been teaching for 26 years and has worked to develop a happy, comfortable, and creative learning environment for her pupils.

 

Through her connection with her students and the decor on her classroom walls, Miceli hopes to help them realize that being kind is possible. 

 

"I have a thing on my wall that says, 'Character is what you do when no one is watching.' So, I hope that they have internalized that," Miceli said. 

 

"We make personal decisions because it's the right thing to do, and sometimes our actions can negatively impact other people, and sometimes they can positively impact other people. So I think happy kids make happy choices, and so I just want them to be happy, engaged children"

 

Every single one of her students in her morning math class jumped at the opportunity to praise their  teacher. 

 

They lauded her kindness, honesty, and good character, which they say made them feel safe in learning and expressing themselves.

 

"She's just really funny and kind, and she makes learning fun," Miceli nominator and student Judah Filson said. 

 

Miceli said she tries to find engaging and fun ways to learn, such as hands-on activities and projects, which help them retain the material.

 

"Franny really takes learning and the look at learning differently. She really is a hands-on classroom. So, by having them be a hands-on interaction and environment, she really impacts, and I think, connects with students that may not connect with learning out of a book or learning from a lecture," Assistant Principal Griffin Labbance said.

 

"She really kind of meets students in an active and engaging way, and so in turn, her students look forward to the activity she plans and look forward to kind of learning and being taught differently."

 

An example of this is the "big project" she was having her students do, in which they used recycled materials to make carnival games. 

 

"It's really a design and engineering challenge where they're going to, they're really working and making these beautifully, kind of super kid friendly projects," Miceli said. 

 

The result of this is a mess, she said with a chuckle, but that is just part of the creative process, and they will all just clean it up.

 

"I like the fact that there's a lot of creativity. I teach them different ways to solve math problems. We've made models in science that allow them to be creative," Miceli said. 

 

"I think this project is pretty fun because they're working collaboratively. It's really just very, very student-driven. So it makes me really happy to see how creative they are. I'm amazed at what they've come up with."

 

The students not only learn the curriculum but also gain important skills that go beyond academics, such as problem-solving, collaboration, and environmental awareness, and they become involved in their community.

 

"The environment she creates is "welcoming. It's free for discussion. I think the environment that she creates is one that allows students to ask questions when they have them and voice thoughts and comments," Labbance said. 

 

"If they get something wrong, they discuss it, and then they are able to continue to ask questions or share their ideas and not feel like they got one wrong."

 

While learning about water quality and watersheds, the students tested the water quality of the Hoosic River. 

 

"I think that helped us because by doing work out in the field, I think we got to interact. I think that that helps learning because we got to collect bugs, we got to look at water samples, we got to identify those bugs, and so we learned a lot about what types of animals live in our environment," fifth-grade student Patrick Philip Sullivan said. 

 

"I think that really like enforced that we got to take care of nature, and if we don't, then it won't end well. So, I think that's really helped us throughout this year, because we've been doing a lot of interactive experiments, and that's really gotten everything that we need to learn in our brains." 

 

Students said learning about this is important because it inspires the next generation to get involved in current issues, such as climate change, and prepares them for the work they will do in the future. 

 

The earth is going to get a lot worse, so it is important to teach the younger generation about climate change "so they can fix the world," fifth-grader Grace Jena Nicole Simmons said. 

 

"I feel like if we don't learn about it now, then when we're older, we're gonna believe that everything's fine," fellow student Aurora Kathleen DeMayo Cruz said. 

 

She said if students don't learn about it when they are older, they may not believe it, and it will take longer to come to a solution. 

 

"We're learning it now, it's better, so that when we're older, we don't have to take a long time actually to believe in climate change," DeMayo Cruz said. 

 

Miceli also teaches her students multiple ways to learn a subject, so if they do not understand something one way, they still have another, 

 

The students are what Miceli loves most about teaching. 

 

"They are really fun. They are completely honest. They have great problem-solving skills. They make me laugh, and even on their worst days, I really just adore them. I relate better to children than I do to adults," she said. 

 

The moment in her career that impacted her the most was when she became a parent, which helped her understand teaching from the parents' point of view and helped her connect with families better. 

 

Miceli attended Kenyon College, where she majored in Classics. While attending the private liberal arts college, she was part of a program that brought local elementary students to look at the school's art gallery. 

 

"I loved it. I thought it was really, it was like my highlight. It was, it felt really enriching and personally fulfilling," she said. 

 

When she graduated, she was not sure what to do with her degree in Classics, so she thought she would try teaching, and she loved it. 

 

Miceli went on to get a master's degree in elementary education from the University of Connecticut. She was named Educator of the Year in 2017 by the Massachusetts Down Syndrome Congress after being nominated by one of her student's parents.