Donna Hill

During her years in the classroom in the panhandle of Texas, Donna has been honored as Paramount Terrace Campus Teacher-of-the Year. She also celebrated becoming District Teacher-of-the Year and Regional Teacher-of-the Year. She was the first African-American teacher to hold the District and Regional positions (1995-96)! The next year, Donna was also honored to become Wal-mart and the Amarillo Accountants Teacher-of-the Year. Later that same year, she applied for and received the O’Brian Scholarship Travel program. This program allowed teachers to travel anywhere for a week to gather information (video, images, etc) related to their subject area to share with colleagues. She chose the Seattle/Vancouver area to go whale watching. Such fun!!! She was filmed by the Texas Reading Association for my curriculum integration practices. During all of this notoriety, Braum’s decided that she would do well on one of their commercials. It was released only in eastern New Mexico, western Oklahoma and the Texas Panhandle. Luckily, that’s where all of her friends and family live. She said, “It was really special to be a celebrity for a few months.?”

Donna now has started her 6th year as an instructional technology specialist in Amarillo ISD, now 24 years in education. While in this position, she has presented at TCEA, other school districts and ESC Region XVI. To Donna, the most important presentation was for Blackboard in Baltimore, MD last year. Her team had a standing-room-only crowd to show how Amarillo ISD uses online teaching for the everyday teacher.

In Donna’s DEN application, she wrote “Video has truly been the best way to see the benefits of technology since our students are masters in this area. I've noticed that as our district has increase the projectors in the classroom and teachers are using video more...believe or not, discipline referrals have decreased. This was an unexpected result of using videos in the classroom.”