“The world waits for no one,” Phyllis Cheek-Walker   reminds herself before she enters her students’ houses or hospital rooms. She ensures that each lesson pushes her students beyond what they think is achievable. After 13 years as a special education teacher at Ketcham Elementary School, Ms. Cheek-Walker has worked for the past four years with the Home and Hospital Instruction Program, which provides instruction and support to students whose education has been interrupted due to physical disability or health impairment. Through project-based learning, she works to engage her students in everyday, practical life experiences.

Ms. Cheek-Walker grew up in a house of educators. Her mother and father were special education teachers and administrators for over 30 years, and her mother served at the Sharpe Health School for decades, working with students with physical and mental disabilities. “The love that my parents had for children, as well as their drive for helping others, inspired me to become a teacher,” she says. Now in her 22nd year, Ms. Cheek-Walker admires her students for their willingness to work hard and persevere regardless of their illnesses. Collaborating closely with each student’s classroom instructor, she spends hours aligning each lesson to the content being taught to their classmates. “The most rewarding thing about teaching is seeing my students light up and get excited when they have completed a task or mastered a goal,” she claims. “That feeling of joy is priceless.”