Celebrating Excellence in Education! conTinued - 2016 Teaching excellence award winners Taylor Rainier 7th & 8th Grade Special Education Teacher, Lovonya DeJean Middle School Ms. Rainier started her teaching career at DeJean Middle School as a Teach for America corps member in 2012. This is her fourth year as a Special Education teacher. “My hero and motivator is Paulo Freire, who viewed education as a liberating practice with student agency at its core.” Ms. Rainier believes teachers should learn from students just as much as students learn from them. She sees her job, as an educator, to deeply understand where her students are coming from, the talents and knowledge they already possess, and what their end goals are. By making lessons as relevant as possible to her students, and validating their funds of knowledge, she feels that she opens up doors to their futures. Helene Burks Biology & Environmental Science Teacher, El Cerrito High School “Building strong relationships and nurturing curiosity are at the core of my approach to teaching.” Ms. Burks believes that building relationships between herself and her students creates an atmosphere in which the students are able to be vulnerable about what they do and do not know, take risks in attempting new skills, and feel trust and security in a way that brings and energy and openness to the classroom. Her classroom creates a ripe setting for growing curiosity through inquiry and exploration in the sciences. She is continually inspired, entertained, and motivated by her students’ passion for justice and drive to improve themselves and the world around them, which mirrors her own. Lawrence Pang Math Teacher, El Cerrito High School Mr. Pang believes that it is not the role of a teacher to “make learning fun”. Rather, it is the role of the teacher to show students how satisfying learning can be, and how important it is when it is not. “To focus on fun is to engage a student for a lesson. To establish a need is to teach a student how to engage themselves for a lifetime.” He strives to teach students to embrace and welcome each challenge as an opportunity to grow and learn about themselves—the greater the challenge, the greater the reward. A high quality failure has as much value as some successes. Whether the student is ultimately successful in defeating any one individual challenge is not as important as how they respond to the adversity. The art of teaching is finding the correct level of challenge. ( 5 1 0 ) 2 3 3 - 1 4 6 4 • F a x : ( 5 1 0 ) 2 1 7 - 3 9 9 6 • E m a i l : c o m m u n i c a t i o n s @ e d f u n d w e s t . o r g
Contra Costa Marketplace - May 2016
To see the actual publication please follow the link above