Aurora honors award-winning educators
At the Aurora City Council meeting on Tuesday, Mayor Richard Irivn honored four local educators, all from Indian Prairie School District 204, who recently won statewide and countywide awards.
The four educators — Rachael Mahmood of Georgetown Elementary School, Mark Duker of Waubonsie Valley High School, Erin Rodriguez of Young Elementary School and Al Davenport of Granger Middle School — received a Mayor’s Award for Excellence and the city’s first ever Crystal Golden Apple Award in addition to the other awards they won.
“Our employees do outstanding jobs day in and day out, and I’m very happy that the city is honoring these four outstanding educators,” District 204 Superintendent Adrian Talley said at the meeting. “They are, day in and day out, in front of our children, serving them, serving our community and serving Aurora and Naperville.”
Mahmood, a fifth-grade teacher at Georgetown Elementary, was named the 2024 Far West Suburbs Teacher of the Year by the Illinois State Board of Education, which puts her in the running to be the board’s statewide Teacher of the Year.
According to a presentation by Clayton Muhammad, Aurora’s chief communications and equity officer, Mahmood inspires students to change their academic self-image and creates an environment of love, support, engagement and fun.
She also works throughout the district and state to help develop curriculums, and she focuses on affirming students’ identities through her curriculums, Muhammad said.
In a speech at Tuesday’s meeting, Mahmood said she was drawn to Indian Prairie School District 204 because of how it values diversity and equity.
Duker, a fine arts teacher at Waubonsie Valley, was named the 2024 Teacher of the Year by the Illinois PTA. Muhammad said Duker fills the school’s hallways with music, theater and art, and ensures that students learn more than just the core subjects of math and English.
He also oversees a number of the school’s art-related events, including the Prism concert, marching band and the fine arts festival, Muhammad said.
In his speech, Duker said that the award is more about the community at Waubonsie Valley High School than it is about his individual performance as a teacher.
“I think you could have inserted many different Waubonsie staff members’ names into this application, but they put mine in, so here I am,” he said. “I’m just fortunate to teach in the community, and I mean the Waubonsie community and the Aurora community, that really values education and gives us the chance to do things we love to do.”
Rodriguez, principal of Young Elementary, was named the 2024 DuPage County Elementary School Principal of the Year. According to Muhammad, she mentors teachers and has made students’ social and emotional needs a priority.
In everything, she focuses on students and their support and success, Muhammad said.
In her speech, Rodriguez said relationships are the key to her success in the district. Those relationships could be with students, staff or anyone else she meets in a day, but they have all gotten her to where she is today, she said.
Davenport, principal of Granger Middle School, was named the 2024 Illinois Middle School Principal of the Year by the Illinois Principals Association. Like Rodriguez, Davenport is focused on his students and leads by example to encourage his staff to do the same, Muhammad said.
He has an open door policy to students so they can bring him their concerns and celebrations, he can often be found fostering a sense of reading among his students by offering book suggestions or reading to them, and he recently created a new mentorship program for at-risk students, according to Muhammad.
He said that, at the end of the day, Davenport can even be found directing traffic in front of the building.
