At the start of each school year, Carbon Lehigh Intermediate Unit 21 awards one of its educators with an accolade called the Annie Sullivan Award.

Annie Sullivan was Helen Keller’s lifelong teacher and friend in the late 1800s.

School psychologist Emily Zappulla won this award based on votes by her peers where she garnered a third of the total vote, a news release states.

Zappulla works in CLIU 21 classrooms at four different school districts: Northwestern Lehigh, Salisbury, Southern Lehigh and Parkland.

As a school psychologist in special education, she helps students become better learners.

She also helps teachers become better teachers.

She specializes in areas such as student assessments and behavior plans, but her outstanding ability to improvise and support teachers in moments of need is what really makes her deserving of an Annie Sullivan Award.

Everyone she works with says her flexibility and willingness to help other educators is second-to-none when a good plan falls apart.

Zappulla understands and fulfills the CLIU 21 mission statement of Helping Children Learn.