Bumpus teacher Vinny Chiaramonte named PBS Digital Innovator All-Star
Vinny Chiaramonte, a computer science teacher at Bumpus Middle School, continues to rack up national recognition.
The Public Broadcasting Service, better known as PBS, has named Chiaramonte as one of 30 PBS Digital Innovator All-Stars this year.
The award is given annually to teachers in pre-kindergarten through 12th grade who are education thought leaders and classroom change makers and whose innovative use of technology and media create exciting learning experiences for their students.
The All-Stars receive an all-expenses-paid trip to the PBS Digital Innovator All-Star Summit in Chicago on June 23-24 and a day pass to the International Society for Technology in Education Conference in the same city on June 25.
It gives them an opportunity to connect with fellow innovators and learn from renowned education experts.
The All-Stars also will receive support and tools from PBS and PBS stations such as Alabama Public Television so they can share ideas on how to integrate technology and digital media into instruction with peers in their own communities and across the nation, according to the PBS website.
Bumpus Middle School Principal Tamala Maddox said that pretty much everything Chiaramonte does is innovative. He’s constantly reading articles and keeping up with the latest trends in education technology, she said.
“He’s always out there trying to find the next thing to support our students in having good digital citizenship and preparing them for our 21st century jobs,” Maddox said.
He has an extensive network of contacts, and it’s not unusual for him to be communicating with educational professionals in California, Louisiana or even other countries, she said. “His learning community is global.”
Chiaramonte also does an excellent job of building relationships with students by having continuous dialogue with them, she said. He starts each school day by writing to his students in the Google Classroom tool and engaging them with questions, and when they answer him, he responds to each one individually, she said.
He helps write the Hoover school district’s computer science curriculum, and he is constantly assisting other teachers and staff with technology issues and helping them implement new technology tools in their instruction, Maddox said.
Chiaramonte in November was named as one of 45 teachers in the United States — and the only one in Alabama — to receive the prestigious 2017-18 Milken Educator Award given to outstanding teachers. The award includes $25,000 in cash.
In 2016, he was named the alternate Alabama Secondary Teacher of the Year after first being selected as Bumpus Middle School’s Teacher of the Year and the Secondary Teacher of the Year for Hoover City Schools.
Chiaramonte, a 38-year-old resident of Hoover's Green Valley community, has been teaching for eight years and is in his fourth year at Bumpus. He previously taught two years as a Bible teacher at Hilton Head Christian Academy in Hilton Head, South Carolina, and later two years as a seventh-grade social science teacher at Montevallo Middle School.
He dropped out of high school as a second-year freshman but went on to get his General Educational Development diploma and entered college the same time as his former classmates and eventually obtained a bachelor’s degree and master’s degree.
Chiaramonte, who wears a Batman mask in his faculty picture on the school website, also is known for his sense of humor.
See this short (more serious) video interview with him, shot in the spring of 2016.
This article was updated at 7:27 p.m. to correct Chiaramonte's city of residence. He moved from Pelham to Hoover.