By: Erik Pedersen, Content Strategy Director
BALTIMORE – A graduate of Notre Dame of Maryland University’s Instructional Leadership for Changing Populations PhD program was featured on a local NBC affiliate for her work sending over 600 elementary school students on memorable trips to the National Mall in Washington, D.C.
Dr. Melaney Sanchez D’12, who has also served as an adjunct faculty member for NDMU’s School of Education for the past 17 years, was highlighted on an NBC-4 Washington broadcast after organizing six separate trips for all kindergarten through grade five students at Mount Harmony Elementary in Calvert County, where she works full-time as a teacher librarian.
Each grade level was given different monuments to visit during the trip – some explored the Martin Luther King, Jr. and Lincoln Memorials, while others learned about the Korean War and Vietnam Veterans Memorials and kindergarten focused on the Washington Monument. All students then wrote and illustrated a page in class books summarizing the experience which were published and distributed at a National Mall Night celebration at Mount Harmony in January.
“This created so many memorable moments for our students,” Dr. Sanchez said. “A bunch of them came up to me afterwards and said it was the best day of their lives. We also did lessons before they went to give them some background knowledge on the monuments. It was empowering for them to be experts on a real world topic that was significant to them. It made such a positive impact.”
Dr. Sanchez, who has held her current role at Mount Harmony since 2016, had organized several other large-scale theme nights at the school, with over 800 people attending Frederick Douglass Literacy Night and George Washington Night events in recent years. This year’s event, though, was the first that also involved a field trip in advance of the celebration. Coordinating the trips involved extensive collaboration with the National Mall’s National Park Service staff and Mount Harmony’s Parent-Teacher Association.
“There would be days where I would have eight volunteers in the library working on different components,” Dr. Sanchez said. “Planning the logistics of the trip, making sure every child had their permission slips in, it was hundreds of hours of work to make sure everything came together.”
Despite her full schedule at Mount Harmony, Dr. Sanchez has remained active as an adjunct professor at NDMU. She has taught several classes over the years, most recently focusing on a reading assessment course which is open to graduate and undergraduate students.
Dr. Sanchez’s experience as a student at NDMU also goes beyond her PhD program. Prior to the doctoral program’s formation, she completed the School of Education’s Certificate of Advanced Study in Education (CASE) instructional leadership program in 2004. She would then add Library Media Specialist and Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) certification in the years after completing her doctorate.
“Notre Dame feels like home to me,” Dr. Sanchez said. “There’s a real sense of belonging and community, and in many ways it has helped raise me into the teacher that I am today. I’ve learned so much, and become way more confident in who I am and what I can do as an educator compared to when I started at Notre Dame.”
Established in 1895, Notre Dame of Maryland University (NDMU) is a private, Catholic institution in Baltimore, Maryland, with the mission to educate leaders to transform the world. Notre Dame has been named one of the best "Regional Universities North" by U.S. News & World Report.
