Golden Apple Award
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Ellen Ewell leads the academic program and is a founder of the Student Success Center
Written by Mary Jo Burke, Director of Faculty & Curriculum
Ellen Ewell was recognized with the Charlottesville’s highest honor in teaching—The Golden Apple Award. The award celebrates her excellence as a mentor, teacher, and administrator at Miller School over the past decade.
Miller School has been fortunate to have Ellen Ewell on our staff since 2013. Ellen has served in many roles, starting as our registrar, then moving into positions teaching Study Skills, and finally as our Director of Academic Advising and Student Support. Throughout her tenure and in every role she has played, Ellen’s approach has always been to find ways to get to know every student as an individual, understand what their needs and goals might be, and help them create a personalized plan to find success.
In the classroom, Ellen has redefined our Study Skills curriculum. The class was conceived to help students plan, organize, and stay on top of their work. Ellen has taken it to the next level by individualizing it to meet the needs of every learner. She achieves this by forging a relationship with every student who enters the classroom. Ellen gets to know their likes, dislikes, and academic and extracurricular interests. She then uses this information to determine the best approach to fit their learning style or to connect personal interests to an assignment or activity.
Ellen not only gets to know the students in her Study Skills classes but is willing to roll up her sleeves and work side by side with them. I have known her to give herself a refresher in a subject -- or even learn it on her own time -- so that she is better prepared to help her students. I can’t imagine many teachers who would be willing to teach themselves Algebra II or Physics concepts for the sake of helping their students understand them better. For Ellen, the good of the student comes before everything else, but she also has a genuine love of learning and natural curiosity that she models for her students by learning alongside them.
As an administrator, Ellen can only teach a limited number of periods in a day. Knowing this, she took the time to develop a curriculum and train our other Study Skills teachers so that all students could benefit from her methodology. Given her student-oriented nature, Ellen simply cannot say “no” when a student needs help. Ellen will work with students at any time of the day if they need her help, making their success her priority. Our students truly appreciate the time and effort that Ellen puts into their success, as demonstrated by the number of seniors who have publicly thanked her in their senior speeches for being their cheerleader and helping them achieve successes they never thought possible.
In her role as Director of Academic Advising, Ellen makes sure that students' and parents' voices and opinions are heard. Every student has a success plan, and courses are chosen not because they check a graduation requirement box but because they meet the interests and future goals of the individual student.
In every aspect of her role, Ellen Ewell is an exceptional educator.
