best. teacher. ever. contest

6
TOP 5 FINALISTS YOU CHOOSE THE WINNER Best. Teacher. EVER.

Upload: wunderchica

Post on 14-Apr-2017

1.358 views

Category:

Documents


0 download

TRANSCRIPT

Page 1: Best. Teacher. EVER. Contest

TOP 5 FINALISTS

YOU CHOOSE THE WINNER

Best. Teacher. EVER.

Page 2: Best. Teacher. EVER. Contest

Nominee: Beatrice Pfaff ASL Instructor, Vincennes University, Indianapolis, IndianaNominator: Monica Gueye

I have a progressive hearing loss, and in my 20s began struggling to keep a job.  Hearing aids never helped me much.  Finally, a co-worker referred me to enroll in American Sign Language classes. 

I felt very out of place in the program along with other students who mostly wanted to become ASL interpreters.  I didn't feel like I belonged anywhere anymore, and very few people understood my situation.  The program itself was total immersion with all classes taught by Deaf instructors in American Sign Language. I felt like a failure, and also left out because of conversations that the hearing students were having. 

Beatrice Pfaff is a part time teacher at the college ASL program, and a full time middle school teacher at Indiana School for the Deaf.  She hardly ever has a moment to breathe with all of her lessons to plan and homework to grade.  Yet, I have never seen her complain about any of it.  Beatrice loves to teach and cares about her students’ success.  The many times I asked her for advice she never turned me down.

Two years ago, I was truly a lost soul.  Beatrice Pfaff guided me to the right direction and helped me know who I am once again.

If it were not for you, Bea, I would have given up.  With your kindness, care, and support I succeeded and I will graduate at the end of this year.

Page 3: Best. Teacher. EVER. Contest

Nominee: P. Curry Leslie, Jr.Television Production Instructor, Raleigh, NCNominator: Shelly Smith Leslie

He showed up that day in 1981 at William G. Enloe High School not looking like a teacher we’d ever seen. He looked more like a boat man, shaggy, curly blond hair, deep tan and jeans. The principal introduced him as our “interim teacher,” a professional television producer who was going to set up the Television Production Magnet program at Enloe.  His first words to us: “I’m not a teacher. I’ll be here a year or less until they find you all a permanent teacher.”

  That was 30 years and thousands of students ago. Turns out P. Curry Leslie, Jr. was, in fact, a teacher – one of the best

teachers EVER. I was a high school sophomore in 1981. Today I am one of hundreds working in the television business and one of thousands of former students who are better, more grounded, more developed human beings because of time in his classroom.

Two most used words in his classroom: teachable moment. He isn’t afraid to get involved in his student’s lives. He counsels. He supports. He’s a cheerleader. He’s a substitute father. He doesn’t hesitate to let his students fail, then pick them up, take full advantage of the teachable moment and give them another chance to succeed. His program is a national success, collecting 26 Student Emmy nominations and 13 wins in the National Television Arts and Sciences MidSouth Regional Emmy awards. Former Enloe TV students are working all over the world. They work at Sony, Industrial Light & Magic, the BBC. They make major motion pictures, own production companies, work at ESPN, network TV, local TV, even at the White House.

P. Curry Leslie, Jr. wasn’t trained as a teacher. He proved life experience, not a piece of paper, provides the best education. He gave his students the benefit of his 25 year television career as a network producer, videographer and director. Then he gave them the benefit of his wisdom, his compassion, his love, and his unconditional commitment to make a difference in their lives.

June 2011, he will retire after 30 years in the classroom, an amazing second career for a guy who “wasn’t a teacher.”

Page 4: Best. Teacher. EVER. Contest

Nominee: Negussie TirfessaPhysics Professor, Manchester Community CollegeNominator: Cordelia

While an undergraduate pursuing a degree in biology, I participated in a NSF-sponsored initiative to consider a rather unlikely career path, that of the K-12 science teacher. The purpose of the grant was to increase the number of science school teachers with degrees in their specialty to impart to their students not just knowledge, but a passion and reverence for scientific investigation. However, I never really understood just how crucial highly trained science educators are until taking Physics I with Professor Negussie Tirfessa.

Professor Tirfessa forced us to be actively engaged from the very first minutes. In each and every class I was forced to think, predict, and utilize logic I wasn’t even able to articulate yet. His classes are run like laboratories—walk into class, sit down and you are faced with a problem: what will happen when he shoots an object across the room from various distances and angles to a simultaneously falling target on the other side of the room, the class is polled and challenged to support their proposed outcome, then the ball is shot, once, twice, three times….was that what we expected? Why or why not? What is happening?

He would never just give an answer, but fully engage me and my fellow classmates in taking a stab at it, forcing us to explain our logic, and then questioning us as a means of redirecting our thinking. This is how real learning takes place, not to mention this is how passion for the subject is spread from teacher to student. And let me tell you, it’s one heck of a high when after several hours of struggling, you suddenly see the light.

It is not sheer chance that Professor Tirfessa has a brilliant mind and talent for teaching; it is clear he works tremendously hard at cultivating that each and every day. He is at the college before many have even woken up, laboring over grading each and every student lab and assignment with precise commentary, getting back to emails at all hours of the day—Professor Tirfessa sets the bar high for teaching, but even higher for learning.

Page 5: Best. Teacher. EVER. Contest

Nominee: Virginia E. Mahaney3rd Grade Teacher, Wilbraham, MA Nominator: Kendra Edmonds

In 1970 I was a participant in the Western Massachusetts version of the city-to-suburban desegregation educational program called METCO. I was a "non-white," low income child living in a single parent household in public housing in Springfield, MA. Boston had been running this program for 4 years with success, so we were the "pilot" bunch for the Western part of the state.

The road was rocky, many of the older children as well some of the adults and teachers were not for this program, and they let us know it every chance they could. They felt we could not integrate well in their small, rural town. Perhaps they were right (many of us did not stay beyond the 8th grade and instead returned to our urban High Schools), but there was one beacon of light, inspiration, and unconditional acceptance and support and her name was Mrs. Mahaney.

I was typical of what the METCO folks were looking for in their pilot group: a child with an independent spirit who had academic promise. But I was also a volatile child, who because of testing and tracking was separated from my urban peers and placed in the highest group to learn alone. This may have been okay, excepting that I was bi-racial and looked more white than black, and since no other black child was in my stratified academic classes, it appeared prejudicial. The black people involved in the program were not very happy with this arrangement, and they let me, a 7 year old child know this as well. So by that second year I was a mess. Fighting with white kids while in school, fighting with black kids on the ride to and from school, I was an ornery, angry child.

Into this came Mrs. Mahaney with her Twiggy frame, Sandy Duncan smile, and Yellowest hair a ghetto rat like me had ever seen! She was patient, kind, and seemed to have a knack for "turning" kids on to education. She sparked, fueled, and fed our little flames of curiosity and gave me some of the most lasting and deeply held foundations of learning I have ever experienced. I still hold  mica from schist rocks in awe and wonderment and fondly remember Mrs. Mahaney for teaching me about it. Every subject was taught with reverence to the knowledge to be gained from engaging in spirited inquiry. We learned how to make filmstrips, how to work cooperatively in small groups and with partners, and how to enjoy learning. I to this day love learning and love Mrs. Mahaney

My life wended through its stormy course, but because Mrs. Mahaney had instilled in me a believe in my ability to be curious and love learning, I persevered. The special secret message that she was able to also give me- that I was lovable and she cared about me, is a gift of immeasurable value that I have never been able to say directly to her. Instead, I believe I have paid it forward in my own life. Mrs. Mahaney is with me in every good deed I do, every student I hug, and every time I say to my own two children or students, "Yes you can."

Page 6: Best. Teacher. EVER. Contest

Nominee: Mary Causey Hamilton3rd Grade Teacher, Cambridge, MANominator: Laura Slapikoff

She was my third grade teacher. At eight years old, I was already seeing a psychiatrist due to trauma in my home life. I was depressed and suicidal.

Miss Causey was kind and intelligent; all her students loved her. Because of my particular home situation, I was poor at socializing with my peers, and she was the one human who treated me as if I was special and worthy of attention.

Miss Causey exposed me to subjects that I would study for the rest of my life, such as Greek and Egyptian mythology. She also spent hours of one on one time with me after school, encouraging my writing. She helped me to complete my first short story, alternating hand-writing the pages with me while I dictated to her. She also encouraged my love of reading, listening to my stories about the books I read.

I am now a published writer, and I believe that anything I've accomplished is largely due to the fact that she bore witness to my passion for words. My mother died shortly after my third grade year, and Miss Causey she reached out to me personally, coming to my home to offer comfort and support. I'll never forget how much of herself she shared with me at a time when I was lonely and without hope. I still feel the same love and gratitude I did as a child whenever I think of her. Without her presence in it, my life would have been completely bereft of emotional support at that time.