Hannah Hanna of Hector is used to being recognized for her unusual name, but Friday she will be introduced at a conference as Outstanding Early Childhood Professional of the Year for 2016.
Hanna, 26, is in her first year as director of Wonderview Preschool in Hattieville and her third year as lead teacher in the program.
She was nominated for the state Division of Childcare and Early Childhood Education honor by Ted Beck, who retired in May as both preschool director and longtime Wonderview Elementary School principal.
“I was so surprised,” Hanna said. “It’s nice to receive the award, but to be nominated for it, that felt so nice to me. I was humbled by it, just for my co-workers and principal to take time to write a letter and send it off.”
Beck, in his nomination letter, said Hanna was hired four years ago as an aide in a kindergarten class at Wonderview Elementary School, a position for which she was overqualified.
Hanna, who lived in Hector, said she was just thrilled to have a job in the district.
“I had searched all summer; I was just so thankful,” she said.
She graduated in December 2012 from Arkansas Tech University in Russellville with a degree in early-childhood education. She had done her practice teaching in Hector and later worked as a substitute teacher in that district before taking the Wonderview position.
Her first foray into preschool education was as an aide in October 2013; then she became the lead teacher the next year.
Beck said he gave Hanna a choice between the preschool position or one in a classroom at Wonderview Elementary School, but she preferred the preschool.
“To me, that showed that she had a strong commitment to early-childhood education,” Beck wrote in his nomination letter.
Beck said he was spread thin with his duties as principal and preschool director, so Hanna managed a lot of the day-to-day operations — taking care of paperwork, purchasing supplies, developing schedules, etc. She also supervised five employees and was the main contact for the preschool parents, he said.
“Hannah did an outstanding job of making sure the preschool ran smoothly and that the children were being taken care of,” he said.
The Oak Grove native said the education field was not her first choice — and she didn’t plan to go to college after graduating from Atkins High School.
“I think I was the first one in my family to actually graduate from college,” she said.
She and her husband, Donnie, got married right after high school and ran a farm, where they grew chickens for a corporation.
“That’s what we planned on doing,” she said, but the corporation filed bankruptcy, “so we had to go find jobs.”
Her first job was at J.C. Penney in Russellville when she was 15. “I feel like I’ve been working all my life,” she said with a laugh.
She and her husband enrolled at Arkansas Tech University in Russellville.
“It was a very drastic change,” she said. “I started in the early-childhood program, and I loved it.”
Her husband was taking agri-business classes, but when she got pregnant with their first child, Brynlee, now 5, he quit and got a job with Centerpoint Energy in Russellville. The couple also have a 1-year-old daughter, Emmalyn.
Hanna said she found inspiration for her career through a second-grade student and her first-grade teacher.
One of her projects in a high school science class was to make a book about the body, “and we had to read it to second-graders,” she said.
Her book was about the skeletal system, and she read it to the elementary class.
“This little boy stood up and said, ‘I loved that,’ and I just loved being in that moment,” Hanna said.
“My first-grade teacher, she was an inspiration to me,”
Hanna said. That teacher was Jamie Siebenmorgen, or Ms. Jamie, as Hanna called her.
“I remember her so distinctly because we made pancakes in her class one time; that hands-on experience — it made an impact on me.”
Hanna said the Wonderview Preschool has 3-, 4- and 5-year-olds. She has 20 students in her classroom and 40 in the program.
“We always have a waiting list, so it’s sad when you don’t have a spot to put the kids,” she said.
Part of the failed property-tax proposal in the September school election was to add a classroom at the preschool.
“It’s like a Head Start, getting them prepared for kindergarten,” she said.
“At this age, they’re very pliable; they love learning right now, so if you can keep that going as they enter kindergarten, I think they’re going to be much more successful than not having preschool, than not having that opportunity.”
The most important thing is for them to get hands-on experiences, she said.
A teacher might have a lesson plan, “but you kind of have to go with what they’re interested in because they’re going to learn more about that instead of what you have set in stone,” Hanna said.
“You have to have lots of different things to pull out of your hat,” she said.
Reading is essential, too, Hanna said.
“We make all kinds of books, and they like their own books. We have a book in our classroom right now that’s our class birthday book: ‘My name is such and such, and my birthday is ….’ They go through that book at lot.
“I don’t actually have any skeleton books; I should get one,” she said. Hanna said her high school teacher kept the one she made to use as an example. “I wish I had kept it,” Hanna said.
Now, about her name. Hanna’s maiden name was DuVall when she started dating Donnie Hanna of Hector.
“At first, I really didn’t think about it. Then it started getting more serious, and I thought, ‘Oh, well, I don’t care. Nobody’s going to forget my name,” she said.
Her mother, Lisa DuVall, suggested that Hannah use her middle name, Paige. “I don’t know myself as Paige,” she said, laughing.
She is Hannah Hanna, Outstanding Early Childhood Professional of the Year.
Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.