The Presidential Award is an honor and embodies the love, support, and encouragement my administrators, mentors, and colleagues have poured into me since beginning my career. It acknowledges educators dedicated to growing their students and continually improving their craft of mathematics teaching. This award allows me to connect with other exemplary educators and continue to learn from them so I can be the most effective mathematics teacher for my students.

Amy de la Torre Birmingham, AL | K-6, Mathematics, 2022

The official biography below was current at the time of the award.

Amy de la Torre has been teaching for 12 years. She is currently a District Math Coach for Shelby County Schools as well as a kindergarten through fifth grade instructional coach. She spent the previous 10 years teaching fourth grade mathematics and science at Oak Mountain Intermediate School. In her first year of teaching, she served as a reading interventionist for first and second grade at Gwin Elementary School. She also spent several months during her first year teaching Advanced Placement Language and General English at Oak Mountain High School. Amy’s passion for mathematics began at a young age. It was her dedicated and engaging teachers who inspired her to become an educator. Amy’s philosophy in teaching mathematics is that the world needs fewer calculators and more problem solvers. She implements this by inviting her students to participate in collaborative, challenging, hands-on activities to develop a foundational understanding of mathematical concepts. While at Oak Mountain Intermediate School, Amy served as a fourth-grade Meaningful and Ongoing Development of Excellent Leadership team member. In this role, she collaborated with fourth-grade mathematics teachers to ensure they had access to curriculum resources and provided support to teachers with the delivery of their instruction. She has also served as a summer curriculum team member for multiple years, writing mathematics lesson plans for the school district. Amy earned a B.A. in public relations from the University of Alabama, where she was a Capstone Scholar. She received an M.A. in early childhood and elementary education from the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

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