ORLANDO, Fla. —  It’s all about family for A+ Teacher Dayami Prieto. She teaches at Sadler Elementary School and wants to make sure every student is included in the learning process.

For Prieto, making sure her students are having fun while learning is important.

"I always tell them that they’re like brothers and sisters," Prieto says. "We have to take care of each other and help each other out. My kids are really good about helping, even with my non-English speakers. It's all inclusive. Everybody is included in every single activity."

She recently encouraged her students to take part in hands-on activities as they learned about sound energy.

Prieto, who has spent 20-plus years and counting in the classroom, remembers what it was like to be a student.

“I had a hard time in school growing up, and I had this one teacher in high school that absolutely made it fabulous for me to teach. I said, ‘This is the teacher that I want to be when I grow up'," she says.

She is striving to emulate that teacher because she says her favorite teacher changed her life.

The way that teacher made learning so much fun for her was different, Prieto says, and she enjoyed going to school from then on. Now she wants to pass that on for her students.

"We have a lot of students here that beat their drums to a different rhythm than everybody else, and I want them to feel that they can be anything that they want to be," Prieto says. "Study. Be happy about coming to school. Have a place where they're going to be accepted for who they are but actually learn at their own rate and learn what they need to learn in their way."