Stacey Brown-Downham has served in many roles and capacities in her 17 years with the Haddonfield school district. On Aug. 6, she was among 21 individuals recognized by the state Department of Education as 2024-’25 County Teachers of the Year.
Brown-Downham was one of eight teachers and staff recognized as teacher of the year in 2023 as part of Gov. Phil Murphy’s Educator of the Year program. That made her eligible to apply for the county award.
As part of her application, Brown-Downham wrote an essay about her dad, who had spina bifida as a child and possibly dyslexia and ADHD.
” … He went through school unsupported, and just knowing how his life could have been changed if the teacher saw him and could provide him with what he needed,” she noted, “He was a kid who was out for surgery all the time and he had all these learning disabilities on top of it. And the teachers at that time didn’t have the same kind of training in special education that we do now.
“Thinking of my dad’s story,” Brown-Downham added, “and knowing what he would have needed growing up, that was a huge part of what made me want to be that for someone else.”
Currently an Elementary Literacy Interventionist at J. Fithian Tatem, over the years, Brown-Downham has also taught at Haddonfield Memorial High School, served as a club advisor for the Gender and Sexuality Alliance for more than a decade and is serving as the club advisor for the Preserving Black Haddonfield Club.
She is also a building equity leader for the district and a community events coordinator for the Haddonfield Education Association.
As an interventionist, Brown-Downham holds literacy close to her heart. Over the years, she has been able to see the results when students are given the right tools to succeed. She watched one student jump four grade levels in one year, and another improved from a pre-primer speller – meaning first-grade level – to the 11th-grade level.
Shortly after the district announced early last week on Facebook that she had won the teacher of the year award, one of Brown-Downham’s former students reached out and told her, “You saved my life.”
“It really can be that meaningful for a kid,” Brown-Downham explained. “Their future is vastly impacted by whether or not they are literate. These are very bright kids who compensated and got their way to high school not knowing the sounds the letters make. They just faked it ’til they made it, but then they got to a point where they couldn’t fake it anymore, and we were able to intervene.
“That first group, they’re in college now and they’re succeeding,’ she added, “which might not have been the case if they didn’t hadn’t learned to read.”
Brown-Downham acknowledged that she couldn’t do any of what she does without the tremendous support of school administrators, colleagues, students, family and those who helped her during her year-long training to become a literacy interventionist.
“It’s traumatic when you can’t read,” she pointed out. “You’re sitting in class, and you’re just hoping that they don’t call on you, because so much of how you’re evaluated, your worth as a student, is evaluated by your ability to read and write.”
Brown-Downham continues to educate people about special education and the different tools and multisensory strategies that can help students succeed with literacy. Winning the teacher of the year honor is not about the award.
“What this is to me is two things,” she observed, “recognition of the impact I’ve had on peoples’ lives, and also an opportunity to collaborate with other teacher leaders across the state to promote what is amazing about education, and also to do a bit of a deeper dive to see what we can do to make things even better for public education.
” … It’s a labor of love.”
