The Presidential Award is an incredible affirmation for me and all those who helped shape me along the way. As a child, I was blessed with caring teachers who really saw and encouraged me. As an educator, I have been fortunate to work alongside wonderful principals, colleagues, and families. I bring all of their influence into the classroom with me as I teach. My students are the reason I do what I do. I am honored to play a small part in their life stories and this award is for them!

Nova Pleman Lexington, KY | K-6, Mathematics, 2022

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

Nova Pleman began her career in the Los Angeles Unified School District, teaching first and fourth grades for five years at Weigand Avenue Elementary School. She then went on to teach at Glendover Elementary School and Russell Cave Elementary School as a classroom instructor and teacher of English learners for five years before working at Booker T. Washington Elementary School (BTWE), where she spent three years self-contained classroom teaching and taught fourth and fifth grade mathematics for four years. She is currently a fifth grade mathematics teacher at Garden Springs Elementary, where she has been for one year. Nova is on a mission to rebrand mathematics as a subject accessible to all and strives to show her students that each one of them can be a "math person". She is enthusiastic about sharing her love for mathematics and teaches students to embrace productive struggle. Nova looks for ways to help mathematics make sense to her students. She incorporates real-world contexts and hands-on experiences, including transforming the classroom into a bakery to study fractions, a pizzeria to study angles, or a football field to calculate measurements. Nova has presented sessions on number routines and increasing student discourse for teachers at the local and state level. Nova has a B.A. in history from the University of California, Los Angeles, and a multiple subject teaching credential from California State University San Marcos. She is certified in elementary education and K-12 English as a new language. Nova is also a National Board Certified Teacher.

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