Henrico's Top Teachers – Adrienne Feldman, Jackson Davis Elementary School, first grade

From the time she was five years old, lining up her Cabbage Patch kids and teaching them lessons at home, Adrienne Feldman felt destined to become a teacher.

But in college, the question of whether teaching paid enough prompted her, with some nudging from family, to consider other paths.

At first, that led to a pre-dental path and plans of becoming a pediatric dentist. Those were quickly replaced by a pre-law track and a vision of being a child advocate. But while studying for the LSAT, Feldman realized none of it was for her.

Instead, she applied to graduate school to become a teacher, was accepted at VCU and moved from her Miami home to Virginia in pursuit of the plans her younger self had kept all along. She’s taught preschool, kindergarten and first grade for about two decades since and wouldn’t have it any other way.

Her home for most of that time has been Jackson Davis Elementary, whose community she knows well because she and her family are a part of it.

“We live in the community,” Feldman said. “I volunteer at the pool next door to the school. I walk several miles a day, and there are always kids out. It helps the kids see me as a person. I’ll show up at soccer games or basketball games. I just feel very connected.”

Feldman is in her sixth year as a first-grade teacher and says she feels so lucky to be where she is.

“I love seeing every day through their eyes,” she says of her students. “They are the most pure and raw and curious little creatures. They amaze me — they’re little miracles. They are just so excited about all of it and they want to know so much. You see that curiosity and that hunger and that thirst for knowledge within them, and it’s just beautiful.”

Feldman's impact on her students – and her care for them – is evident to parents.

“Mrs. Feldman does so many little things to show how much she cares about her students,” one nominator wrote. “Her enthusiasm for teaching and caring for her students is evident in the way she runs her classroom and in her interactions with students and parents alike.”

For Feldman, her individualized approach to learning the ways each child can succeed, then adapting her teaching style to reach each of them, is simply part of her job requirement.

“Every child has a gift and a genius,” she said. “It's up to us teachers to figure out what that is.”

Feldman is able to find ways to impart key life lessons to her students in non-traditional ways.

“One student this year came to her with behaviors that became unsafe elsewhere,” a nominator wrote. “Mrs. Feldman has created a sense of belonging with this student and my daughter has been gifted the experience of seeing how she can be a helper.”

Experience, in a way, has flipped Feldman's view of a teacher's role on its head.



“In the beginning, I used to think if I could just change one life or make one child love learning, then I’ve done my job,” she said. “Now at the end of the year, I feel like if there’s one I didn’t get to, then I failed.”

That way of thinking has paid off for all of her students, according to nominators.

“She finds a way to understand the needs and strengths of each student, and then use those strengths to help other students,” one wrote. “This has created a beautifully collaborative environment, that shares the experiences of what success means when it’s happening in a group.”

Feldman's grandmother was a longtime English teacher at Granby High School in Norfolk, and during visits, Feldman said people would stop her and rave about her grandmother's impact.

“It was so humbling,” she said. “I saw how proud she was.”

That she now has a similar opportunity to make a lifelong impact on the students she teachers is something Feldman doesn't take for granted.

“There is nothing I'd rather be doing,” she said. “I feel so lucky and grateful every day that I get to do what I love. Being with children is the best reward. I feel like this is where I'm supposed to be.”