Teacher Appreciation Week: Catching up with August 2025 Pay Tribute to a Teacher winner

It’s Teacher Appreciation Week, so we’re checking in with some past winners of the KTAR News 92.3 FM’s Outspoken with Bruce & Gaydos Pay Tribute to a Teacher award.

Kelly Nelson, a special education teacher at Kyrene Aprende Middle School in Chandler, was the August 2025 recipient of the Outspoken with Bruce & Gaydos Pay Tribute to a Teacher award.

The monthly award, which is sponsored by Your Valley Toyota Dealers, comes with a $2,500 prize.

Nelson said she used the funding to pay for her classroom’s prize box – and to make one student’s Christmas very special.

“We picked one of my students who needed a little extra support at Christmas and provided a whole Christmas for them. So, we got clothes and shoes and toys and food and just everything so that the kid could have a really nice Christmas,” she said.

Her school uses a positive behavior support system for her student to encourage good behavior, and some of the funding went toward refilling that prize box.

“We have a big treasure box that has little toys in it. The stuffies have been our No. 1 seller,” she said. “We even differentiate between large stuffie, medium stuffie, little stuffie, so those got expensive this year because they were the hot thing!”

In the nine months since she won the award, Nelson also became a National Board-Certified Teacher.

“It’s a very intensive process. It took two years; there’s four different parts to it. It’s a very rigorous process where you really have to analyze your teaching and all of your practices,” she explained.

Want to nominate somebody for the Pay Tribute to a Teacher award? Submissions are accepted here.

Funding for this journalism is made possible by the Arizona Local News Foundation.

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