Kathleen Bonanno: The Poet and Chalkboard Champion

Sometimes our students (and their parents) forget that teachers are real people. We live, we laugh, we love, and we suffer, just like any other human being. Kathleen Sheeder Bonanno is a remarkable teacher who reminds the entire community that teachers live the full range of human experiences.

Kathleen Bonanno was born in Reading, Pennsylvania. She attended Temple University in Philadelphia, where she earned her bachelor's degree in English and her master’s degree in education. She taught at Dobbins High School in North Philadelphia for five years and Cheltenham High School in Wyncote, Pennsylvania, for the past seventeen years.

Like many educators, Kathleen is multi-talented. She is the author of an award-winning book of poetry entitled Slamming Open the Door ((2009), a volume which Library Journal described as "a stunning first book." Kathleen wrote the collection of poems following the gut-wrenching murder of her daughter, Leidy Bonanno, an abandoned child from Chile Kathleen and her husband adopted. Leidy was strangled in 2003 by a former boyfriend, just after her graduation from nursing school. The loss inspired Kathleen to become an advocate for victims’ rights and a member of the Montgomery Country Parents of Murdered Children. For her efforts, this amazing teacher and author was honored with a Women of Courage,Women of Inspiration Purple Ribbon Award from the Lutheran Settlement House in Philadelphia in 2008.