Kellie Ehlers was stunned when she heard her name announced as winner of the Gary Smith Compassionate Teacher Award.

"I was so shocked when I heard my name," she said. "It was so exciting and I felt so honored and humbled and wonderful to be recognized like that. I know so many other teachers worthy of this award. I always see teachers going above and beyond what is normal, especially in Worthington schools."

Ehlers' award was announced during the district's annual Convocation, a celebration of the new school year for Worthington City School District staff members held Aug. 25.

The award was created in 1998 by recently retired teacher Niki Gnezda and her children, Yvonne, Tony and Katherine, in honor of Gnezda's late husband, Gary Smith, who was an educator and coach in the district for 30 years.

"Gary Smith was such a fantastic person and coach and support to children," Ehlers said. "I'm just so honored that Niki selected me out of all the choices. I have big shoes to fill.

"I always tell my husband John that I am a trench worker. I know the powerful work I'm doing a lot of the time, but I think most people have no idea. But I know and the kids know and that is where my real joy comes from.

"I can't stop smiling about this award," she said.

Ehlers is the Reading Recovery teacher at Evening Street Elementary School, but it was an unexpected project at Thomas Worthington High School that led to her nomination for the award by fellow teacher Margie Smith.

Cindy Westover, district language arts coordinator, asked Ehlers to come to the high school to assess a group of English Language Learners.

"I'm trained in Reading Recovery and usually screen first-graders to find out who is at risk and would benefit from Reading Recovery, but I was not trained as an ELL teacher," she said. "The high school students had only been in the country a few months but they were so grateful and eager to learn. They had not been permitted to go to school in their own country and I knew these students really needed me."

Ehlers said while she tested the students, she began to formulate a plan for a pilot reading program.

"I ran the idea by Kelly Wegley, who teaches at the high school, and she said 'Yes, let's make it work,' " she said. "The pilot may have been my idea, but I needed a lot of people to make it work. It couldn't have happened without a lot of people helping and our wonderful school district."

Ehlers recruited 15 volunteers to read and work with the students for one hour a day every school day last year.

"No one missed a day," she said. "If you think about ELL students, they are using only their own language, so they need to hear people speaking and reading English."

She acquired books from a book distributor she knew, brought them to Evening Street and met with teachers and volunteers to organize the program.

"The volunteers could come in, pick up a folder and start right in," she said. "They helped the students not only with language and literacy, but also focused on science and math."

Smith said the students volunteered in Smith's third-grade classroom at Evening Street as part of their school day, so they could interact with the third-graders and "be surrounded by the English language."

Fitting the pilot into her already-full schedule as a Reading Recovery teacher was challenging, Ehlers said.

"I would skip lunch to attend meetings at Thomas, then skip my planning period," she said. "Every time I had a spare moment, I would race over to Thomas, then back to Evening Street."

Ehlers also logged hours last year by filling in for a Slate Hill Elementary School Reading Recovery teacher on emergency leave.

"I missed a lot of lunches and planning time, but I was able to test out all my at-risk students because they did so well in the Reading Recovery program," she said.

Ehlers calls the pilot program "PropELL" and hopes to add a second phase to recruit high school students as reading volunteers.

Ehlers, who began teaching in Worthington in 1993, called the award "the highlight of my life" and said it was a collaboration by many people.

"I'm so grateful to have the honor of studying with Cheri Slinger, the Reading Recovery teacher leader, and blessed and honored to teach in Worthington," she said. "The professionalism in Worthington is unmatched and the people are so gifted.

She also credited the support of her husband, because "he gives me the courage to try and to ask, because you're not out anything by asking," and her parents, because "they were the best examples of human kindness I would ever know in my life."