Educator is nominated Top Teacher

Penny Ellis, a special-education teacher at Oceanside High School, was quite surprised when she found out that she was a semifinalist in “Live! with Regis and Kelly’s” second annual Top Teacher Search.

She was even more surprised when she learned that she was one of the syndicated morning show’s five finalists. “I was shocked, overwhelmed, humbled,” said Ellis. “I’m still feeling that way.”

Ellis wanted to be a special-ed. teacher ever since she was a girl. Her father worked at the Town of Hempstead’s Anchor Program in Lido Beach, a program for special-needs children. Penny volunteered there when she was 14, and fell in love with it. “I knew exactly what I wanted to do,” she said.

A teacher for 27 years, Ellis, who has two daughters, has been with the Oceanside district since 1990. She originally applied for a job filling in for a teacher on maternity leave. She was instead offered a position as part of a new program the district was starting. Ellis accepted, and spent the next 16 years teaching the same group of nine students, starting when they were 5 years old and staying with them through elementary and middle school and on into high school, where they graduated at age 21.

“It was amazing,” recalled Ellis, who now teaches a different group of special-needs students. “I still speak to them. They call me, they leave messages on the phone — because those were some of the life skills we taught them.

“I’m just so proud of them, and I’m so lucky to have experienced that,” she added. “I don’t think many people experience actually starting with a group and watching them exit the school system, and being with them every single year.”

Ellis was nominated as a Top Teacher by her aide, Mary Bores, who has worked with her since Ellis came to the district. “[I nominated her] because I think she’s a wonderful, marvelous person,” said Bores. “She’s so caring of children. Her first priority is children. She’d do anything for children.

“There was a child that we had in our class that needed crutches and eyeglasses and sneakers — Mrs. Ellis bought them,” Bores continued. “Everything is about the kids, nothing is about Mrs. Ellis, and that’s what I love about her.”