Donna McManus

Tell us why you became a teacher

I was that child who always wanted to play school. I set up my dolls as my students and taught them my homework. I found that when I taught, I understood things better.

Tell us about your most memorable teaching experience

My first year of teaching was the most memorable because it was all new. I taught Grade 3. I worked long hours creating learning centers to give my students hands on practice for their newly learned skills. We used our imagination to write stories and illustrate them and even wrote books. We used file folders and wallpaper to make our book covers. We created a class library with our books. For Chinese New Year I taught the Asian customs. I brought in a wok and we cooked crispy noodles.

What would you do with the $25,000?

I would like to set up a learning camp in the summer for Grades 3-5 where we would apply skills to real learning. We live at the coast. The camp would include visiting nature centers to discover types of plants and compare our results, explore bay and beach to discover living organisms and compare them. We would research biomes and publish our findings online.