Gillett Elementary School teacher Tammy Dantoin has been selected as a 2025 Herb Kohl Educational Foundation Fellow.
The fellowship program recognizes and supports teaching excellence and innovation in Wisconsin, supporting teachers in the pursuit of their unrealized goals for their classrooms or professional development.
The 100 Herb Kohl Fellowship recipients and the 100 schools where they teach will each receive a $6,000 grant.
Dantoin’s career spans 31 years, with two stints at Gillett Elementary School — first from 2002 to 2012, and then returning to Gillett in 2018.
Principal Curt Angeli said Dantoin has served on several interview panels and can be counted on to tell prospective teachers, “I’ve taught in other schools. I came back to Gillett and will retire here, because it took me those years to realize that Gillett is ‘home.’”
Angeli told the Gillett School Board at its April 17 meeting that at one time, the Gillett School District had a teaching roster full of Kohl Fellowship winners. Most of them have since retired, except for Dean of Students Bryan Brown and Special Education Director Wendy Simonis.
“Tammy, with her tremendous gifts and her tremendous leadership, I’m hoping this will be the first of many,” Angeli said.
Angeli said Dantoin has grown immensely as a leader over the years.
“She takes on student teachers, and she has cultivated staff members that we have now — that is who she is. She takes them and she nurtures them,” he said, and used one first-year teacher as an example. “She has absolutely raised the level of this teacher in her first year to where I don’t even feel like she’s a first-year teacher. That’s really because of Tammy and everything that she does.”
Most importantly, Angeli said, Dantoin forms a “wonderful” learning environment in her classroom.
“She has high expectations for her kids and holds them to account, and then in the same breath has them all laughing and engaged in her lesson,” he said. “There’s never a moment you walk by her room where she is not active with her class or teaching small groups. She is beloved by her students, her parents and her fellow staff … and, not surprisingly, her principal.”
wbluhm@newmedia-wi.com
Gillett teacher earns Kohl Fellowship
