With seven years of high school teaching experience culminating as a master teacher and three years at Hampton Elementary School, Melonee Ginn Mattie had racked up her own collection of “gold stars” and earned the respect of her colleagues and peers.
Described as a born leader, Ginn Mattie, a former student of Hampton Elementary, is dedicated to the progress and development of every student. She has served as a mentor teacher on the school leadership team for TAP: The System for Teacher and Student Advancement and a TAP master teacher. The TAP System is a robust model that allows educators to take on extra roles and responsibilities, receive job-embedded professional development and feedback for improvement, as well as competitive compensation. In addition to her classroom responsibilities, Ginn Mattie is a leader within the school.
For her own students, Ginn Mattie put a laser-like focus on thinking, problem-solving and applying learning across disciplines. This requires strategic planning aligned to standards and differentiating instruction based on everyone’s abilities, areas of strengths and areas needing refinement. Through it all, Ginn Mattie made a point to make learning fun, even with the most difficult material. One way she motivated students is through a system in which they earned tickets for good behavior. They could then use those tickets to choose rewards from a menu of items they helped to create.
Due to her efforts, her students made more than a year’s growth based on value-added student achievement data, and her students’ English Language Arts scores represented some of the greatest gains in the school.
At the school level, Ginn Mattie was chair of the Implementation and Data Team, a strong collaborator and encouraged her colleagues to be reflective about their practice. Her classroom was used as a model for others, and Ginn Mattie believes that parental involvement is paramount. Along with her commitment to educating the “whole child,” Ginn Mattie encouraged her students to participate in Relay for Life to help them become caring adults.
Mrs. Mattie is current the Curriculum Coordinator for the Hampton County School District, servicing PreK-12th Grade.
"When you get an award like this it makes you want to..." (read more)
2011 M.A., University of South Carolina
2004 B.A., University of South Carolina-Aiken