Norwich — As classes, student award ceremonies and graduations have gone online in this semester of COVID-19, so too did the annual tradition of the Norwich superintendent surprising the school district’s teacher of the year on the final day of school with flowers, banners and visits by family members.

Meghan Campbell, a fifth grade reading and writing teacher at Uncas School, was participating in the weekly school staff online video conference Thursday when Uncas Principal Peter Camp introduced a special guest, Superintendent Kristen Stringfellow.

Stringfellow made “the exciting announcement,” Campbell said, and Camp told her she needed to go outside her Rockwell Street home.

There stood the Uncas School mascot, Wolfie; her husband, Kyle Campbell, their 4-year-old son, Reece — 1-year-old son Tate slept through the entire event — her parents, Donna and Frank Feraco, mother-in-law Amy Campbell; and partner fifth grade teacher Sarah Seery. Former Norwich Teacher of the Year Amy Kenyon was in the wolf costume.

They held a banner, brought flowers and cheered as a Norwich Fire Department fire engine blared its siren.

“We’re living in a virtual world,” Campbell said. “It’s different.”

In the news release announcing Campbell as the Teacher of the Year, Stringfellow called Campbell “a master teacher,” a leader and an ambassador for Norwich schools.

“By celebrating Meghan, we celebrate all our amazing Norwich teachers!” the news release stated.

Campbell, 34, grew up in Norwich, attended John M. Moriarty School, Kelly Middle School and Norwich Free Academy, graduating in 2003. She earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology at Eastern Connecticut State University and earned her teaching certificate and master’s degree at the Sacred Heart University program in Griswold.

She has spent her entire teaching career in Norwich schools, starting with student teaching at her own school, Moriarty. After graduation, she became a classroom interventionist at Moriarty and then a long-term substitute before starting as a full-time first grade teacher in 2009-10. The next school year, she moved to Uncas School.

Campbell was the teacher representative on the committee to work on the school’s application for additional funding through then Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s Commissioner’s Network program. Campbell accompanied then Superintendent Abby Dolliver to Hartford in May 2014 when they learned the school’s application was accepted. The designation brought more than $600,000 in state funding to the school to fund added staff, parental outreach efforts and classroom interventionists, plus another nearly $700,000 for capital improvements.

“It was great for Uncas,” Campbell said. “We got technology, faculty and staff to help. We just tried to build capacity with the money we had and create support services to close the achievement gap.”

Uncas, located near public housing and several blue-collar neighborhoods on the West Side, has many students from low- and moderate-income families. Campbell is excited that Stringfellow recently announced an effort to analyze and respond to issues of equitable access to education in Norwich.

“Kids are coming to us with a lot of needs,” Campbell said.

She added the annual “budget crisis,” with staffing, program and supply cuts, doesn’t help. The Board of Education last week finalized an $84 million budget that required elimination of dozens of support staff positions, including classroom interventionists, para-educators, nurses and custodians.

Campbell said she focuses on her students. She cited a poster in her classroom that represents her philosophy: “Every child is one caring adult away from being successful,” it says. She thinks of her students as “my kids,” and said it’s hard to say goodbye to them each year as they move on to middle school.

Like everything else, the fifth grade graduation ceremony moved online Tuesday, when Campbell got to see the faces of about 20 of Uncas School’s 36 fifth-graders who participated in the ceremony.

“I’m looking forward to getting back to school,” she said. “We’re kind of on hold waiting for what the state and the (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) have in mind for schools. I’m looking forward to getting back and seeing the kids. You really miss seeing the kids every day. As much as they try to be grown up in fifth grade, you miss giving the kids a hug.”

c.bessette@theday.com