Adelson teacher delivers life lessons along with the basics

The Adelson Educational Campus isn’t your everyday average school.

Tuition runs $17,800 a year for most grades, increasing to $20,550 for high school, unless you receive financial assistance to attend the northwest valley school.

Trying for a teaching position there in 2008, Mandy Mace Madnikoff knew it would be a long shot as a graduate fresh out of UNLV.

“There is no way I’m getting hired,” the fourth-grade teacher remembers thinking. “No way. I’m new.”

The school may be small with 625 students — ages 18 months to 18 years old — but it generally hires experienced teachers and searches nationally and internationally to find the best, said Stacy Colwell, head of Adelson’s lower school.

The interview is exhaustive, Madnikoff said. She developed a lesson plan and taught a class in front of school leaders that was filmed by a roaming video­grapher, and also was individually interviewed by school officials.

A month after graduating from college with a master’s degree in elementary education and a stint as a substitute in the Clark County School District, she defied the odds. She got the job.

Sometimes you just get a feeling about someone, Colwell said.

“I saw that potential and that love for children,” said Colwell, familiar with Madnikoff from the Jewish Community Center summer camp where she worked.

Six years after being hired, Madnikoff’s fourth-grade students excel on standardized tests, she is one of Adelson’s curriculum coordinators and she is now being named Clark County Educator of the Month for March. Madnikoff was nominated by a parent and chosen by a panel that includes members of the Clark County School Board, the Public Education Foundation, Teach for America and private school representatives.

The Las Vegas Review-Journal and Sierra Nevada College sponsor the program, which will honor the monthly winners and name an Educator of the Year at a June 17 breakfast at Angel Park Golf Course.

Academics isn’t Madnikoff’s only interest. The 30-year-old also likes running summer camp.

“I don’t want to just teach kids from a book,” said the teacher, who was soaked head to toe Friday from a water gun fight for the annual Field Day, celebrating another school year almost finished. The theme this year was wet ’n’ wild. Her hair, just an inch long, dried quickly.

“I want to teach them about life,” said Madnikoff, who tells her students, “You can be the smartest person in the world but not get the job because you can’t relate to people and bomb the job interview.”

That goal of preparation for post-school is constantly present, said Galit Rozen, a parent and constant observer of her daughter’s teacher at work. Rozen volunteers as Madnikoff’s class mom and was surprised to see the teacher invite students into the room for parent-teacher conferences.

“She doesn’t talk to us, but the child,” said Rozen, who was shocked to see the adult-like treatment of students as Madnikoff talks to fourth-graders about their performance. “A lot of teachers are wonderful teachers, but kids don’t feel warmth or caring. These students know they can go to her for anything.”

But they still look at her as a mentor, not just a fun friend, Rozen said. That’s the key, Madnikoff has found.

“If kids respect you, they’re going to learn,” Madnikoff said.

And learn they do in her class, but often in unexpected ways, such as when Madnikoff wanted to shave her head for the St. Baldrick’s Foundation, raising money for childhood cancers research.

It wasn’t her plan to make it part of school or her class, but another teacher wanted to join in, as did some students when they heard what their teacher was doing.

“One of my kids said, ‘I’m not going to shave my head but raise money,’ ” Madnikoff said.

He trained teachers and parents on how to use their Apple products for $50 an hour.

Madnikoff used students’ interest to her advantage, raising money by having interested students start businesses. They planned marketing strategies for their products, analyzed supply and demand and calculated return on investment.

One boy would stay late and tutor others after school. A girl sold rainbow bracelets. The class raised $10,000 last year and $20,000 this year, said Madnikoff, walking back to her students on the soccer field Friday.

About a dozen ran over, burying her in hugs.

“I was gone for three seconds,” she said with a smile.

Contact Trevon Milliard at tmilliard@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0279. Find him on Twitter: @TrevonMilliard.