Congratulations to the January Teacher of the Month, Ms. Tanya Elizabeth Friedman of the San Francisco Community School. Thanks to her extraordinary efforts, she has created a classroom that helps students realize their full potential in a challenging, engaging and, of course, fun environment.

In her second and third grade combined classroom, Tanya is a tireless force of nature. She consistently acknowledges her student’s brilliance and masterminds an even playing field for all students. Encouraging her students to aspire for excellence, she works one-on-one with her students and finds unique ways to make learning exciting.

Her students love the hands-on activities she has created for them, like the physics-intensive Lego amusement park, in which students researched, designed, and built an amusement park out of Legos. She also got the students thinking about business problem-solving skills, starting a classroom-to-classroom Super Students Postal Service. Tanya Friedman is also tough, expecting (and getting!) excellent behavior and quality work from her students. Described by one of her nominating students, Ms. Friedman is “thoughtful, creative, encouraging, fun and fair.”

Hanging on the wall in large letters is Tanya’s classroom slogan, "HOW DO YOU KNOW?" Students are encouraged to ask themselves this question as they form answers, and when called upon, they are asked to give their rationale behind their answer. This places more importance on rational thought than correct answers: Tanya Friedman believes that developing critical thinking skills is one of the keys to educational success.

Tanya’s work in her classroom parallels her work in the local community. Just as she reaches out to each student in her classroom, she reaches out to other teachers, showing them how she gets such fabulous results from her second and third graders. Impressively, her teaching methods are so effective that the San Francisco Community School encourages other teachers to adopt her innovative teaching methods, such as the “Powerful Ways of Thinking” teaching strategy that synthesizes, emphasizes, and encourages each student to reach their intellectual zenith.

Through her dedication to education, compassion to all students, leadership in the community and love for her work, Tanya Elizabeth Friedman is the January Teacher of the Month.