Teaching Profession Video

This Teacher Won a Grammy and Saved a Life

By Lauren Santucci — October 19, 2023 3:30
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Pamela Dawson, the choir teacher at DeSoto High School outside Dallas for the last 17 years, sees formal music education as secondary to the life lessons and healing that students get from her classes. The educator believes that her approach is what won her this year’s Grammy Music Educator Award.

In the spring of 2022, Dawson received an email informing her that she’d been nominated for the annual award. It wasn’t her first nomination—she was a top-ten finalist in 2020—and she wasn’t sure she wanted to go through with the Grammy nomination process again. But she did. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Hear what that experience was like, and how she’s using the award to continue to benefit her students.

Lauren Santucci is a video producer for Education Week.

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Katelyn Webster, from left, Eryn Miller, Grace Bischoff, and Hanna Pearsall take notes as Amanda Pierman teaches her upper school science class at The Benjamin School in North Palm Beach, Fla., on Feb. 10, 2025. Pierman uses AI to help teach her classes and the student’s computers mirror the main screen. They are then able to answer questions live using their computers.
Katelyn Webster, from left, Eryn Miller, Grace Bischoff, and Hanna Pearsall take notes as Amanda Pierman teaches her upper school science class at The Benjamin School in North Palm Beach, Fla., on Feb. 10, 2025. Pierman uses AI to help teach her classes and the student’s computers mirror the main screen. They are then able to answer questions live using their computers.
Josh Ritchie for Education Week