Melanie Zamorski knew she would become a teacher as soon as the 8th grade. Melanie grew up in Somers, CT with her supportive parents and younger sister. She attended Elmira College in Elmira NY, graduating CUM LAUDE and earning a bachelor’s of science with a certification in English Education. She attended UMass Amherst as a part of the graduate program, 180 Days in Springfield. There, Melanie taught 7th grade ELA at Chestnut Middle School and earned her Masters in Education.
Following graduation, Melanie was hired at the Sport and Medical Sciences Academy in Hartford, where she fell in love with the capable, motivated students, collaborative staff and the environment which promoted student growth. After a year of teaching freshmen, she began to teach junior and senior ELA courses and several ELA electives, including Journalism and Media. Melanie became a certified ECE English instructor in 2009 and joined the ECE Advisory Board in 2013 where she served for three years in order to provide a voice to the students she serves. Through these experiences she learned the importance of making students a partner in their education and began seeking out opportunities for students to explore pathways at SMSA.
In 2017, Melanie, along with several of her students, recognized the unused broadcast studio in their building and decided to learn how to utilize the equipment in order to restructure her Journalism and Media Course from a paper based news course, to a broadcast news course. Since then her talented and creative students have produced a weekly news show: Tiger Talk! Students focus on topics and issues they care about, build strong communication skills, work as team members and tailor the learning to their interests. Melanie is passionate about ensuring all projects are student-led, reflecting her wider philosophy that students are entitled to a voice in their education. In a collaboration with the district, her students are currently at the forefront of developing the HPS Career Conversations program.
Melanie gives back to the HPS community and teaching profession by TEAM mentoring new teachers and serving as a cooperating teacher, many of whom have found themselves as teachers in Hartford. She has thrown herself into her school community, where she serves as an English Language Arts Team Leader, coached multiple sports over several years, and served as a member of the school governance committee. Reflecting a wider commitment to Hartford education, Melanie also helped to write the HPS ELA curriculum and worked on the Portrait of a Graduate Rubrics.
Two years ago, Melanie proposed moving her classroom to the school’s vacant library in order to revitalize it and return it to the heart of SMSA. In collaboration with her senior students, Melanie has reorganized the library and began book circulation again. She built up a rainbow library, added many high interest graphic novels to scaffold reading levels throughout the building and has collected multilingual books to facilitate ML students with reading. Engaging the help of her student librarians, she has run multiple literacy awareness events. Her classroom is now a hub of student learning and collaboration, as well as a welcoming environment that fosters inclusivity and belonging for the entire school.
When not teaching, you can find Melanie on a field or a court coaching her daughter and son and the Somers High Softball team. She currently serves as the Vice President of the Hampden-Wilbraham softball committee. Melanie’s goal is to continue to create opportunities to allow students to explore their voice and create opportunities. She believes that all Hartford Public students deserve to learn in an environment that allows them to thrive in ways that are meaningful to them.