NBC Connecticut had the chance to break some exciting news in person to a teacher at the Celentano Museum Academy in New Haven this week.
Matt Presser is one of just three NBC Education Nation Essay Contest winners from across the U.S.
He'll join leaders in education from across the country in New York City later this month for the 2nd Annual Education Nation Summit.
Here' an except from his winning essay:
"To everyone out there Waiting for Superman to save education -- some good news: I've found him. Wonder Woman too. They sit in the back row of my language arts class.
Superman gets distracted sometimes, especially on Mondays after a weekend during which he didn't get his 2 free meals from school.
Wonder Woman sometimes puts her head on the desk because she's tired from taking care of her younger siblings while her mom works a second job."
Local
Matt wrote the essay about two weeks ago, while he was sitting in his New Haven apartment after Tropical Storm Irene blew through.
"I had no power and nothing to do and I thought, why not write about my kids who inspire me," the second-year language arts teacher said.
Matt came to New Haven to get his master's degree at Yale and quickly became passionate about the kids he worked with in the city's public schools. He believes his students make a superhuman effort to be in class.
"They want to learn and it's something so powerful to me how much they want to be here, how much they thirst for knowledge," he said.
He sees his role as part Pied Piper, part sounding board and wants the students to be writing for real reasons, not the artificial things that sometimes happen in schools.
Last year, his seventh graders wrote letters to New Haven Mayor John DeStefano. Then, Matt took it a step further and invited him to their class.
"Mr. Presser made it happen. The mayor sat down and talked to us for two hours. We understood where he was coming from and I look at the world differently," Caprice Lewis, an eighth grader, said.
It's a view from an often-troubled vantage point, but one that Presser said should never be ignored.
Here's how his winning essay concludes:
"There are no better experts about life in the classroom than Superman, Wonder Woman and their peers. Even Clark Kent needs some time to discover the superpowers within him. We owe it to our children to allow them the same."
