The Rotary Club of Sedona Red Rocks presented its Teacher of the Year awards to Carianna Leifland, a middle school facilitating teacher at Sedona Charter School; Kelly Cadigan, a fourth-grade teacher at West Sedona School; and Mariah McElrath, an English teacher at Sedona Red Rock High School, during its Wednesday, May 7, meeting.
“We are grateful to teachers for inspiring, motivating students, racking their brains for creative ways to teach a concept or lesson to make sure it’s fun and energizing for the kids,” Teacher of the Year Committee Chairwoman Janene Heidelberg said. “We’re also grateful for the fact that they spend their own money frequently to make an activity meaningful and fun, and building students’ confidence, and also building their skills, but their talents, too.”
Heidelberg was assisted by Rotary members Joetta Winter and Dionna Prow in selecting this year’s recipients of the award, which Rotary has presented to Sedona teachers since 2007. The honor includes a plaque and a $500 honorarium.
Carianna Leifland
“It’s a huge honor to be recognized,” Leifland said. “This is my first year stepping into leadership, which has been kind of a challenge and a blessing all at the same time. In the Montessori schools, every classroom is a combination of grades, and the head teacher is kind of like a principal-educator hybrid.”
“It’s the last year that [SCS] will have a middle school, so we are aiming to go out with a bang,” Leifland added.
Leifland said that she will remain at SCS in the fall and will be teaching grades four through six in the upper elementary classroom, but that fellow SCS middle school teacher Samantha Malinski will not be returning after being offered another job at the school.
“It was exciting to see that [Leifland] truly does connect with the students and students come to her if they’re having a rocky day, and they do admire her and respect her greatly, so what else could we wish for?” SCS Executive Director Amy Fultz said. “And she is part of the leadership team at our school, and she attends almost every single event that our school holds, along with almost every event in the Sedona community.”
“I bought something for my six-year-old daughter [Julianna] and the rest goes into saving,” Leifland said of how she spent her honorarium.
Kelly Cadigan
Cadigan has been teaching at WSS since fall 2020, having started in a second- and third-grade combination class, and is also the coach for the Girls on the Run afterschool program that teaches young women physical fitness and empowerment.
Girls on the Run is gearing up for its next 5K, scheduled for Saturday, Nov. 8.
“She’s among a group of leaders that they have on campus,” Superintendent Tom Swaninger, Ph.D., said. “She’s devoted to her students in the classroom and outside of the classroom because coaching … is important to her and important to those kids, and I think that she represents the type of educator that we are looking to promote within our school system.”
Rotary chose to honor Cadigan this year for her unique lessons, such as teaching her students to sew and hatching chickens.
“A few years ago, a student came to me upset because he had some holes in his sweatshirt and getting a new one wasn’t an option at the time,” Cadigan wrote in a personal statement. “This was also during COVID when families were strained and going to the store wasn’t as accessible. My grandmother and father taught me to sew growing up, so I got the idea that we would learn how to sew … And it aligned perfectly with a math unit I teach, so before I knew it, my students were fixing their clothes, sewing bags, blankets and anything else they could design. From sewing, hatching and raising baby chicks, woodworking projects, water filtration design and model building, to solar ovens and many meaningful projects, there’s always something being created where students take the lead and engage in their own learning.”
Cadigan said that she plans to use her honorarium to pay for student care packages that will include books and other items she finds helpful, with anything left going toward her master’s degree in education.
Mariah McElrath
McElrath teaches freshman and sophomore English and AP English Literature at SRRHS in addition to working with the Scorpion cheerleading team and National Honor Society.
“Mariah is a fairly new teacher,” SRRHS Principal Heather Isom said when presenting the award. “She’s been with us for her student teaching, and then this is her second year, and there were no growing pains. She was so knowledgeable and prepared, and she worked so hard to make sure that she is providing what our students need.”
Retiring SOCSD Director of Curriculum and Instruction Karyl Goldsmith subsequently said that McElrath was her student teacher during the spring semester of 2022 before she was promoted to her new role.
“She just picked up all the techniques and strategies that teachers use, like she was born into it,” Goldsmith said. “[McElrath] wasn’t hesitant to, just on day one, just get into the groups with the kids and interface with them, which I totally appreciate, because sometimes student-teachers are very shy and standoffish … Then this year she took on the challenge of AP Literature, and next year she’s going to do AP Literature and Research. So she’s even upping the ante next year.”
