Keaʻau Elementary School fifth grade inclusion teacher Daphna Ehrenhalt received this year’s Hawaiʻi State Teachers Association’s STACY Award for teaching excellence.

Ehrenhalt has been a professional development instructor for five years. She/they is Keaʻau Elementary’s HSTA head faculty representative, and has served on the HSTA Human and Civil Rights Committee for three years where they helped develop Transgender 101 for Educators, a workshop on how to support transgender youth. Ehrenhalt, who is non-binary, uses the pronouns she/they, and works to ensure every student feels safe, happy, and loved.

While serving  on the board of Hawaiʻi Island LGBTQ+ Pride, Ehrenhalt put together safe space kits, delivered hundreds of LGBTQ-friendly books to classrooms and libraries, and organized holiday toy drives for the East Hawaiʻi Family Guidance Center.

Before the pandemic, Ehrenhalt taught American Sign Language after school so students who were deaf or hard of hearing could feel included. They also partnered with a colleague to form Kinder Buddies, a reading group that allows kindergarteners and fifth graders to connect and grow together.

HSTA’s award for teaching excellence program was established to celebrate the outstanding work of the late Stacy Nishina, an outstanding public school teacher and longtime staff member of HSTA. As the recipient of this year’s award, Ehrenhalt will be HSTA’s nominee for the NEA Foundation’s Horace Mann Award for Teaching Excellence and NEA Member Benefits Award.