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Westport’s teachers are back in the schools today, and this morning they met their colleagues who have been nominated for the 2007 Teacher of the Year honor.
Karen Emanuelson, Marissa DeVito Haddad, Kenneth C. Hine, Ursula Malizia, Nancy Pennell and Gregg Winters have been nominated for the honor. The winner will be honored during the Sept. 25 Board of Education meeting.
Emanuelson, an elementary math support teacher at King’s Highway Elementary, said her teaching career began when she was in sixth grade and she was asked to take over teaching a third-grade church school class.
It’s become harder to open the classroom door to other teachers, she said, and to find the keys to learning as the students get older.
It’s the small acts, however, that enrich and empower other teachers to act and do what is right, she said.
“I still can’t believe I get to do this every day,” she said.
Haddard, a Staples High School biology teacher, said she took part in freshman orientation earlier this month, and the students were nervous but also excited.
She said when she was a new teacher, she felt the same emotions, and each year those same feelings appear again.
Each of her classes, she said, is a gift because she can inspire her students, who are freshman, to have a love of science throughout their entire high school career.
Hine, a Saugatuck Elementary technology teacher, said most of his teachers impacted him significantly, but some so much he still remembers significant details 20 years later.
“We have an opportunity to impact our students’ lives into adulthood,” he said. “They are lucky to be with you because you have chosen this path.”
Malizia, a King’s Highway Elementary teacher, said she was hired two days before the school year started 15 years ago as a kindergarten teacher.
Recently, she was in Pier One and one of her students from that first class approached her and told her how much he loved her class.
“It’s moments like this that remind me what a good decision I made,” she said. “I always fall in love with my students.”
Pennell, a special education teacher, said she felt like a fraud because she works so closely with her collegues.
“They all make my job doable,” she said. “Without the paraprofessionals, I wouldn’t be able to do my job.”
Greg Winters, a music teacher who has been at both the elementary and middle school levels, said when his favorite class was band when he was a student, and remembers thinking how he thought it was great the band teacher got to stay in the band room and teach all day.
“I was shocked when I became a teacher and realized he didn’t stay there all day,” he said.
Winters listed all of the extra duties a band teacher has to do that take him out of the classroom.
“It’s when our students realize we really want to be there we are able to create a positive atmosphere,” he said.
