Henrico's Top Teachers – Isabel Ammendolia, Montrose Elementary School, fourth grade

Isabel Ammendolia was a shy child, keeping to herself most of the time. But when she learned how to read, her whole world changed. She might have been too intimidated to interact with others at school, but with her books, she could encounter all sorts of people and adventures.

Now a fourth grade teacher at Montrose Elementary, Ammendolia gets to be the person who teaches her students how to read, broadening the worlds of other shy little kids.

“With learning how to read and literacy skills in particular, I really think that students are owed that from their school system,” Ammendolia said. “I believe that those literacy skills help to prepare students for a life that’s going to be full of opportunity and a life where they’re able to be a part of a broader global conversation.”

Ammendolia teaches language arts to all fourth graders at Montrose, and her students have a wide range of reading abilities. Some students are still learning how to sound out basic words. Others are reading way beyond a fourth grade level.

Working with kids – especially teaching kids how to read – is something Ammendolia knew she wanted to do even before she was an adult. Her brother has dyslexia, and watching him struggle to learn how to read as a kid, and then seeing all he was able to accomplish when working with a reading specialist, made her invested in teaching literacy.

“Growing up, I remember that learning to read was something that came pretty naturally for me, and it was something that I relied on a lot,” she said. “As for my brother, he has dyslexia, so I remember seeing the differences between our journeys with reading, and I also remember seeing the progress that he was able to make with the help of a reading specialist.

For Ammendolia, seeing a child learn how to read for the first time is a magical experience. This year, she also spent time outside of her fourth grade class tutoring a first grader at Montrose who had limited school experience.

“It was really wonderful to see him, over the course of about a semester, go from not knowing the sounds of the letters to being able to read – just short three-letter words, but to be able to sound them out and to start making meaning of them,” she said.

Forming personal connections with her students often happens outside of the classroom. At each school where she has taught, Ammendolia has helped out with all sorts of clubs – from gardening club to running club to even a jump rope club. Last year, when she taught fifth grade at Rivers Edge Elementary, she played soccer every day with the boys from her class. This year, she often brings in students who are shy or who are struggling into her room to have lunch with her.

“One thing I do a lot of times, actually multiple times a week, is I’ll have students that will eat lunch with me, and most of the time it’s the students that are needing a little bit of an extra boost that day,” Ammendolia said. “Maybe they need a listening ear, just a little bit of time to take a break away from the noise in the cafeteria.”

She also attends her students’ activities outside of school, showing up at soccer games, football games, cultural events, food festivals and more. She has become an important figure to all of those in the Montrose community, one Montrose parent said.

“Isabel goes above and beyond to take care of her students,” the parent wrote in a nomination letter. “She is young and passionate about her role guiding our youth through the different challenges they all face. She lives in the same community that her students do and is a beacon of light in the Montrose neighborhood.”

As a teacher post-COVID, Ammendolia says she has seen a lot of the impacts the pandemic has had on her young elementary school students, especially socially.

“Nationwide, we’re still kind of coming to terms with some of the long term impacts of COVID,” she said. “I wouldn’t say as much so in the academic sense, although of course those are there as well, but in the social sense of how kids are still really learning how to appropriately interact within the classroom.”

COVID has also had a tremendous effect on reading, Ammendolia said, hindering some students more than others. That is a big part of the reason her fourth grade class has such a wide array of reading skills, with some students excelling and others struggling with the basic reading fundamentals.

“A lot of students that we have coming up to upper elementary now missed some of their most fundamental years of learning how to read,” she said. “Some of them missed big chunks of kindergarten and first grade. And now in the upper elementary sphere, we’re seeing those challenges all coming to us.”

But Ammendolia believes that all students have it in them to succeed. Learning to read can change everything for a young kid, and she is determined to give that experience to all of her students.

“I believe that all students can learn given the right circumstances, and I believe that all students have a right to a safe and loving and structured environment while at school,” she said. “Learning to read, I mean, it broadens everything – their worldview, everything around them.”