These teachers represent the city’s best. Step inside classrooms of 3 of Philly’s Lindback winners.

As students enter Shakeera Morgan’s classroom at W.D. Kelley Elementary School in North Philadelphia, there’s a ritual. Every child gets a fist bump, a hug, or a high five — a reminder, as her second graders walk in, of the message that’s posted front and center in her classroom: “You are loved.”

When Tyriese Holloway was a child, caring educators helped stabilize and inspire him, despite chaos at home, and that backdrop infuses the energy he brings to his classroom at Overbrook High.

Rosemary Jacob seeks to make her classroom at Jay Cooke Elementary in Logan a place where students who are otherwise overlooked or uncomfortable can shine.

Morgan, Holloway, and Jacob are among this year’s 60 winners of a top Philadelphia School District teaching prize, the 2024 Lindback Distinguished Teaching Award. The three are emblematic of the kind of educational excellence that inspires students around the city, work that will echo for years to come.

Since 2008, the Lindback Foundation, which recognizes strong teaching at local colleges and within district schools, has awarded millions of dollars to teachers chosen by a panel of district and Lindback representatives.

» READ MORE: Here are Philly’s 60 best teachers of 2024

Morgan’s second graders at W.D. Kelley learn — a lot. But that happens because of the tone Morgan sets from day one.

“I think you can do all the lesson-planning you want, you can have all the classroom management, but if your students aren’t shown that love and care and nurturing, everything else goes out the window,” said Morgan, whose classroom runs like a well-oiled machine.

When Morgan was a little girl growing up in Jamaica and New York, she’d teach the plants lining her porch and use charcoal to write on the wall. But for a time, she abandoned the idea of going into the education field, instead studying business law. But eventually, she realized her place was in the classroom. Degrees at Community College of Philadelphia and Chestnut Hill College cemented that conviction, with jobs working in early childhood education, then at a Philadelphia charter school, then at Houston Elementary, and finally, Kelley.

Morgan is Kelley’s “trauma ambassador,” trained in trauma-informed practices and a resource for other Kelley teachers. Her students might be experiencing homelessness, or struggling with the loss of a family member, and Morgan meets them with love and flexibility.

That means that you might see one of Morgan’s students brushing her teacher’s hair while working on her phonics lesson: The little girl struggles with emotional regulation, but because she feels calmer brushing hair, on a tough day, Morgan gives her the brush and helps her sound out words.

Morgan both tears up and beams when asked what the best part of her job is.

“Watching the students who have challenges at the beginning of the year — their growth, to see how far they’ve come,” she said. “They’re resilient, they’re brave, they’re courageous. They know anything you put your mind to, you can do, especially if you’re surrounded by the right people.”

School was always a bright spot for Holloway, who endured a tumultuous childhood in Camden, and then Williamstown, Gloucester County.

“What I was going through was kind of complex,” Holloway said. “My family was not prioritizing education.”

Holloway was adopted twice; in one family, he was responsible for taking care of a younger sibling and his adoptive mother, who was ill.

“I remember spending a lot of time outside of the classroom trying to keep my family together,” said Holloway. Teachers gave him new clothes and food and checked up on him.

Later, in high school, Holloway, who is Black, endured racism, and suffered further trauma when his father died and his brother was convicted of murder. But he also found a mentor, an administrator who gave him his first job.

The mentor also told Holloway — who was not previously interested in a career as a teacher — “you really care about this education thing.” Holloway moved to a transitional home for foster youth and began studying education and English at Rowan University.

After graduation, he taught English in Japan, then moved back to the U.S., where he moved to North Philadelphia, began volunteering at the César Iglesias Garden and began teaching in the Philadelphia School District.

After working at Thurgood Marshall, a K-8 school in Olney, he moved to Overbrook High, where he’s taught English for nearly six years.

Holloway wants to be for his students what his best teachers were for him: an important figure in their lives.

“I try to demystify,” said Holloway. “A lot of these things look really big and insurmountable. I want to make it simple for people to understand that you can make it to whatever you want to.”

Jacob is a reading specialist, charged with helping struggling readers in kindergarten, first, second, and third grades at Jay Cooke Elementary in Logan.

But she’s also a relationship specialist, using strong connections with her students to advance their learning and make them feel welcome at school.

“I love working with the children — I work for them,” said Jacob. “That’s what keeps me going. They come every day, and if I’m absent, they say, ‘Where were you?’”

Teaching is Jacob’s second career; she spent her first working for the Girl Scouts of America as a camp director and field employee starting troops around Philadelphia, and won a statewide prize for her work in multicultural education. Eventually, she enrolled at Eastern University to study multicultural education, then earned her teaching certification and began working at Kenderton Elementary in the district in 2002.

Shortly thereafter, she was transferred to the district’s office of nonpublic programs, working as a reading specialist in private schools that contracted with the school system. But when that contract ended, she returned to a district classroom in 2018.

She felt lucky to land at Jay Cooke, assessing children’s reading knowledge, then working with small groups of kids who need extra intervention to reach proficiency.

“The children I work with sometimes can be overlooked in the classroom, but in this little setting, these kids feel comfortable,” said Jacob, who will often spend her lunch period working with a student who needs extra help, or be sought out by former students who want to spend time in her room.

There’s intense scrutiny now of how children are taught to read in the U.S., with growing attention to the “science of reading.” But that’s nothing new for Jacob.

“The science of reading is very important, especially for kids that come in with a deficit,” said Jacob. “We have to fill the void as quickly as we can. It has to be done systematically — you need to have the mechanics of reading down before you can start to build comprehension.”

In nominating Jacob for a Lindback award, Christie Parfitt, Jay Cooke’s principal, wrote she had “never seen someone teach with more excitement and enthusiasm than she has.” Jacob, Parfitt said, “is the fairy godmother of reading!”