Magic is happening in classrooms in Northern Kentucky’s public schools, according to Boone County middle school teacher Kevin Dailey. He said he’s seen it firsthand.
He found it in Zach Neal’s language arts and music classroom at Campbell County Middle School, where Mickey Mouse ears and Disney images fill the spaces between students’ work, Dailey said. Neal sometimes inserts Disney stories into lessons to make them more relatable because “we all know Disney,” according to one student.
All of that, Dailey said, is helping students learn by transporting them to a new kind of “happiest place on Earth.”
“They are pushing themselves to do more and know more, but it all facilitated in an environment of comfort, calm and support entirely created by Zach and his larger-than-life personality,” said Dailey, a middle school history teacher at Ballyshannon Middle and the 2024 Kentucky Teacher of the Year.
“For anyone questioning if this is ‘too childish’ or if middle school students are ‘too old for Disney,’ I want you to resist that thought,” Dailey wrote in Kentucky Teacher magazine in May. “For a young person who is being asked to sit all day long and push themselves academically, this little touch of comfort can mean the difference between success and failure.”
Over at Newport High School, Dailey said magic is being made by middle school social studies teacher Nate Green – a force majeure who Dailey said puts his students first. Green’s Monday morning student check-ins, teaching style and innovative YouTube series “Coffee with Mr. Green” let students know that he cares about them as a whole person– and it’s making a difference, said Dailey.
“He loves them. He supports them. He embraces their whole selves and makes sure they know that no matter what happens, he is there for them,” Dailey said about Green in Kentucky Teacher. “He shows up.”
Green and Neal are among at least 20 teachers whose classrooms Dailey has visited in person as part of his 2024 Teacher of the Year project called the (Im)Perfect Classroom. The educator plans to visit dozens more (there are over 100 teacher recommendations total) before he is through, he told the Kentucky Board of Education Wednesday.
All teachers interviewed by Dailey have been recommended by a parent, colleague, former student, or someone who told Dailey something about that teacher that makes them really stand out.
“Each one of these comes with a story about what makes their classroom special,” Dailey told the state board. “I got to feel what it was like to be in their space. To feel what the students feel when they walk into those rooms and, my God, was it incredible. It was amazing. And it was wildly different in every single place, in all corners of Kentucky, in all types of classrooms.”
Right now Dailey is taking what he has learned from the magic makers he’s visited and distilling it for teachers in all 171 public school districts statewide. The ultimate goal is to find “those attributes that make (those teachers) magic and disperse that to new and aspiring teachers so they can find their magic sooner,” he told the board.
“I was only able to visit 20 classrooms. But my work isn’t over,” said Dailey “I’m really excited to continue this journey and to make sure all the 100 plus teachers and any other teachers recommended for this get their flowers because they deserve them.”
Dailey is a Holmes High School alum and dedicated public school teacher who is known for making magic of his own. His students at Ballyshannon regularly go on classroom adventures that take them out of the everyday and show them new things. One of his initiatives is a Ballyshannon Guest Speaker series that brings expert knowledge into the classroom in ways that engage and inform.
“The lessons in my classroom allow students to explore a time or culture they may have never had the opportunity to encounter,” Dailey told Kentucky Teacher last year. “These experiences can spark curiosity, build empathy and understanding for others, and truly make learning fun.”
Being named Kentucky Teacher of the Year is only the latest accolade for the Boone County teacher. Dailey is also the 2024 Kentucky Middle School Teacher of the Year. Back in 2021, he received the Milken Educator Award – a national award for early-to-mid-career teachers, which some call the education Oscar.
The (Im)perfect Classroom project has taught him a lot, Dailey told the state board. Some of those lessons apply to teachers, administrators, or the community as a whole.
Teachers need to prioritize their time and energy where it best serves the teacher and students, Dailey reported. Administrators, he said, need to make their teachers “feel trusted as professionals and valued for what they bring to the table.”
As for the community, Dailey said the way to find the magic in local schools is to go looking for it.
“Incredible things are happening in your children’s school,” he said. “They are all over the place. I’ve gone to big schools, little schools, big districts, little districts, and in every single one of them there are incredible things that no one would know about unless you went looking.”
Kentucky board of education chair Sharon Porter Robinson on Wednesday called Dailey’s presentation “provocative.” Kentucky should look further into taking inventory of its teacher assets based on what she heard, Robinson said.
“Do we have a hope of ever inventorying the resources we have in our teachers in terms of expertise that they have, the things they are really passionate about that is a source of energy for them that they bring? Because I have a feeling we are not yet using it in an intentional way,” said Robinson. “We need to have a big book with ‘we have a teacher in this county that is really good at community relations and we need that service in this school.’ (etc.) So it’s a matter of getting a pool of our assets to answer some of those questions.”
In response, Dailey said students in those teachers’ classrooms are a source of information.
“We need to talk to the students about what the skills and strengths are. We need their input and we need to talk to other teachers,” he said.
Dailey finished his presentation before the board Wednesday with pointed remarks on funding of public schools and support of public school teachers. The remarks came as Kentucky voters prepare to vote on a proposed constitutional amendment to allow public funding for private education this fall.
The 2024 Kentucky General Assembly voted to place the proposed amendment on the ballot last spring.
“Teachers are encouraged about the future of education, about the future of public schools,” Dailey said. “But most importantly, teachers In Kentucky are necessary. They’re necessary for the workforce. They’re necessary for infrastructure. They’re necessary for any political thing you may vote for. If you do not vote for public schools first, I doubt success in any of the other areas will follow.”