Touching
Lives
Target Range teacher wins
teaching excellence award
A whopping 22 letters supporting the nomination of this year's winner of a
prestigious education award share a common theme: Melodee Smith-Burreson is a great
teacher. The Maryfrances Shreeve Award for Teaching Excellence is presented annually by
UM's School of Education to a teacher who goes the extra mile both inside and outside of
classroom walls.
Burreson, a second-grade teacher at Missoula's Target Range Public School, was selected
for the Shreeve Award based on her 24 years of exceptional teaching in western Montana
schools. The award recognizes her skill, innovation and commitment as a teacher.
The $2,000 Shreeve Award was established in 1992 to honor the master elementary teacher
who taught for 37 years in Montana. Shreeve died in March 1998.
Burreson will be presented with the award at a gathering of her colleagues -- the
School of Education's 11th annual Teacher Education Reception -- on March 4.
The reception also honors several hundred western Montana teachers for supervising
student teachers and interns from UM.
Burreson earned a bachelor of arts in education from UM in 1976. She has taught fourth,
fifth and second grades during her 22 years at Target Range.
Among those singing Burreson's praises in reference letters was a former student now
completing a degree in elementary education at UM.
"If I could be half the teacher she is," wrote Amy Schwenk, "I would
surpass many of my goals and dreams. I can only hope to reach as many students as she has
during her teaching profession and maybe touch the life of a student, as she had done for
me."
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