Luisa Sparrow, a fifth- and sixth-grade special education teacher in Boston, is dedicated to making sure everyone in her classroom and the school community at large feels included.
Sparrow is part of the inclusion planning team at Oliver Hazard Perry School, where she teaches, and started an inclusive cooking club where general education students and students with intellectual disabilities can learn to delicious snacks together.
That passion for embracing everyone is what led the Wilmington resident to be selected as the Massachusetts Teacher of the Year by the state’s Executive Office of Education.
“We try to focus on activities that can help the students in my class and the students in the general education class build relationships,” she said in an interview. “I think relationships are a huge foundation for students to feel comfortable taking risks.”
Sparrow has been teaching for 16 years, beginning in 2005 as a Teach for America Fellow in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas after earning her bachelor’s degree in human development from Cornell University. He didn’t start out in special education, but instead taught science.
The special education class at the school where he worked at the time was across the hall from his own classroom. The teacher in that class saw some of the activities Sparrow was doing with her students and asked if she could share some with him.
“I said, ‘Why don’t you bring your class and we can do this together?'” she said. “And that worked really well.”
For special education students who participated in activities with their own students, Sparrow said they began to see their standardized test scores for science increase. This made her realize how blended classes helped students grow.
Sparrow attended the Harvard Graduate School of Education for her master’s degree in education with a focus on language and literacy. After finishing her degree, inspired by one of her teachers, she made the full switch to special education.
During her career, Sparrow has taught in Texas, Delaware, Pennsylvania and even Costa Rica, but she has been at the Perry School for eight years. Her class is made up entirely of students with intellectual disabilities, but they have the opportunity to work with general education students throughout the week on projects and in inclusive classroom classes.
The Cooking Club meets every other week and uses visual recipes that include photos next to each step so that students with varying reading abilities can participate.
His team is also always looking for more ways to make the school community even more inclusive.
“We definitely want to do more,” Sparrow said. “There’s a lot of room to grow, for sure. We’re not thinking, OK, that’s it.”
Outside of school, Sparrow serves as an on-call reader for teachers pursuing their National Board Certification and as a Senior Policy Lecturer for Teach Plus. He also works with youth in the foster care system and with the elderly documenting their life stories.
Sparrow is the 63rd Massachusetts Teacher of the Year and the eighth to come from Boston Public Schools. She will be automatically nominated as a state candidate for the National Teacher of the Year program.
“Mrs. Sparrow is an example of the exceptional educators we have in Massachusetts who go above and beyond to support all of their students and foster an inclusive learning environment,” Education Secretary Patrick Tutwiler said in a statement.