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Blast from the Past
Bronwyn Maxwell, Class 33
Bronwyn was born and raised in Long Island, New York. She is from a large family with five siblings including Scottsdale Leadership’s very own Linda Milhaven of Class 8. Bronwyn told us that she had visited Scottsdale with her family when she was four. They loved our area and even bought a house here in the early 70’s. But her family still lived and worked in New York so they all went back to New York where Bronwyn graduated from High School. She decided to go out of state for her undergraduate degree and enrolled at the University of Kansas (KU) in Lawrence, Kansas. After getting her degree in Early Childhood Development at KU, she moved to Scottsdale in 1991 and lived with her sister Linda who had already moved here. She decided to get her master’s degree in Elementary Education at Arizona State University (ASU). She completed her master’s classes while she was working as a teacher in Scottsdale.
Teachers, in our opinion, are some of the most important and yet underappreciated people in our society because parents do not understand how difficult it is to work with challenging young kids. In Bronwyn’s case, she was drawn to one of the most challenging types of teaching, which is helping kids who have special needs break through their learning challenges. She is a brave warrior for sure. She calls it the hardest job that she loves.
From the first days of her teaching career, Bronwyn has worked with the PANDA program in the Scottsdale Unified School District (SUSD). PANDA stands for Program to Assess Needs in all Developmental Areas, and provides a wholistic set of programs and early intervention services for 3 to 5 years children with special needs. Even though these types of special needs programs are federally mandated for every school district, Bronwyn has learned how to make the SUSD’s PANDA program stand out in its effectiveness and ability to help these kids prepare for their future education. She has been supervising the PANDA program for the pass 8 years.
In 2011 Bronwyn had a unique opportunity to work at ASU on an Early Literacy grant as a coach to teach the teachers all across the valley on how to instill early literacy in kids as a foundation for their first experiences in reading when they enter kindergarten. When that grant was not renewed at ASU she returned to SUSD and continued on with her work with the PANDA program. She credits that experience at ASU with giving her a better understanding of how young parents can improve their child’s ability to read by starting to introduce words to them even before they are born and continuing that effort in their early years. This has been proven to help their development as they start school.
Bronwyn was encouraged to go through the Scottsdale Leadership program by her sister Linda Milhaven while she was serving on the Scottsdale City Council. She applied to the program in 2019 and joined Class 34. She graduated with her fellow classmates in 2020. Unfortunately, her class was very different than normal because of the Covid-19 pandemic. Nevertheless, Bronwyn loved her experience, even though it was under the weird circumstances. She has even gone to help facilitate and run the Education Day for the current classes. Her experience is invaluable to the new classes. Scottsdale is very supportive of its educational efforts, but she teaches the new classes about all the potential pitfalls if we do not continue that support.
As we mentioned earlier, Bronwyn is married to another great Scottsdale Leadership graduate Kevin Maxwell. She was so proud to see him receive the 2023 Frank W. Hodges Alumni Achievement Award. They met in 2009 at the Roaring Fork in Scottsdale and they have been together ever since. They have been married for 12 years and live in the southern part of Scottsdale, which they absolutely love. Bronwyn is also a proud board member of the Coronado Foundation for the Future which helps students with financial support for them to continue their education at a local community college, EVIT or technical school. On a personal note, she told us she is taking up golf again, and is starting to join Kevin on the golf course. Bronwyn also enjoys playing pickleball. But really, they just enjoy each other’s company and hanging out with their friends, family and their two rescue dogs Archie and Mabel.
As dedicated and engaged as Bronwyn is, she is not the type of person who seeks the spotlight. But her story, and the things she does every day, deserve to be celebrated. That is why we should all make the effort to thank teachers like Bronwyn for the work they do every day. We are so grateful that she has chosen to continue on with Scottsdale Leadership in helping our new class members to understand how our society cannot afford to let these young special needs kids fall through cracks of our system. As we finished our interview with Bronwyn, we came to understand that the best thanks she probably could ever receive for a job well done is to look upon the happy faces of her young students as they continue to blossom and grow.