Caroline Kline
Peñasco Jr./Sr. High School
Peñasco
Los Companeros Fellow

Janet Martin
Eagle Nest Middle School
Eagle Nest
RK Strong Fellow

Patti Olsen
Memorial Middle School
Las Vegas
Koldyke Fellow

Gaylia Wade
Truman Middle School
Albuquerque
PNM Foundation Fellow

Golden Apple Award Winners 2013

Ulrike Kerstges teaches physical education at Ventana Ranch and Tierra Antigua Elementary Schools in Albuquerque.

Terri Lindstrom teaches fourth through sixth grade math and social studies at Tierra Amarilla Elementary School in Tierra Amarilla.

Ann-Marie McCollough teaches first grade at Manzano Day School in Albuquerque.

James Olivas teaches sixth grade at Naaba Ani Elementary School in Bloomfield.

Theresa Sandoval teaches kindergarten at Dolores Gonzales Elementary School in Albuquerque.

Jeff Tuttle teaches third through fifth grades at Monte Vista Elementary School in Albuquerque.

Cristal Dawn Wilson teaches pre-kindergarten at Mark Twain Elementary School in Albuquerque.

The award-winning teachers were nominated last spring by either their school’s principal or by other teachers, parents, students or community members.  The 144 teachers nominated teach at 113 different schools in 36 communities. Nominees represent 31 of New Mexico’s 89 districts, with four teaching at charter schools and 15 at private schools from around the state.

Finalists not selected for the award are recognized as Golden Apple Teachers of Distinction.  They are:  Leslie Baker, third grade at Taos Charter School in Taos; Kathleen Cole, first grade at Bandelier Elementary School in Albuquerque; David Kitts, kindergarten at Cochiti Elementary School in Pena Blanca; Christine Laffler, fifth grade at Zia Elementary School in Albuquerque; Lisa Manes, first grade at Lea Elementary School in Lovington; Kim Mock, third grade, Jefferson Elementary School in Lovington; Velia Raff, fourth and fifth grades at Cien Aguas International School in Albuquerque; and Lisa Wenner, fourth grade at Capitan Elementary School in Capitan.

The Golden Apple Award winners and Teachers of Distinction will be honored at a Tribute to Teacher Excellence luncheon on Friday, March 8, 2013, at the Embassy Suites Hotel in Albuquerque.  Individual tickets and table sponsorships for the Tribute to Teacher Excellence are available through the Golden Apple Foundation of New Mexico, (505) 268-5337.

Pay tribute to your special teacher by clicking here.

by Del Hansen, NM Teacher of the Year and Golden Apple Volunteer

When teachers feel exhausted at the end of the school year, it is for a reason–they have just run a marathon.  As we learned before, education is, indeed, a marathon.  However, as one plods, scurries, and jogs along the path of the school year, there are coping mechanisms and best practices which make the journey more enjoyable for both teacher and student alike, and all the while help one present the subject matter in a way that sticks to the kid’s mind like Velcro.  One way for that to happen is to vary classroom activities.

I have always marveled at the way elementary teachers can juggle a dozen topics and subjects all the while being mauled by a swarm of touchy-feely second graders.  After spending a year with my middle school brethren, I feel they also deserve great credit for their ability to manage multiple activities simultaneously and still maintain relative sanity.

This brings me to the topic of “The Plate Man of Argentina,” with the “g” pronounced as an “h.”  I can fondly remember sitting in the living room with my family watching the Ed Sullivan Show on Sunday night at six pm.  (Yes, this was many years ago, even before the parents of the children whom I taught were born—sigh).  We watched Senor Wences, Mary Martin flying around as Peter Pan, and Topo Gigio,  who I didn’t even like, but watched just to hear Sullivan pronounce his name.  Then, with the band playing “Ritual Fire Dance” by Manuel De Falla, this little man from Argentina came out and proceeded to twirl fine china platters on skinny wooden dowels, managing to keep seven of them going as he dashed to and fro.  I was mesmerized and halfway wanted one of the plates to crash.  They never did.  I grinned as wide as a tickled Cheshire cat when he was done.

Good teachers are like the Plate Man.  With effortless precision, they manage a class of thirty squirrely students with ability levels running the gamut from genius to otherwise.  Investigations, practice, group activity,  and seat work flow seamlessly like warm “buttah” on a hotcake, and kids learn despite being flakey, young, and having the attention span of a gnat.  Toscanini, the great conductor, had nothing on these virtuosos of classroom planning.  I marvel at them and try to emulate them as well as I can.  They are amazing.  I have broken my share of china plates this year, but I am getting better keeping them spinning.  I just hope another gap-toothed, tow-headed boy is not rooting for any more of mine to crash!  I guess it would be poetic justice if they did.

Next blog:  Being like a music teacher

The Summer Olympics are just around the corner, and one cannot help but admire the dedication, tenacity, and determination of the participants.  As I trundle down the halls at Camino Real Middle School (Las Cruces), I often think about the similarities between Olympians and my teaching colleagues around the state.  It is true that not everyone is as ripped with muscles as a Romanian gymnast or lithe and supple as a springboard diver, but the people I see and with whom I interact are equally dedicated, tenacious, and determined as are the athletes in London.  (As I say this, I am having serious guilt pangs about gulping my 500 calorie vanilla bean frappuccino this afternoon.  Lucky for me, that feeling just went away.)

The public needs to realize, quite apart from bombastic tirades on talk shows and radio, that most teachers are dedicated to their profession almost to the point of being detrimental to their own family life.  They love what they do; they love kids; and they love learning.  Olympians love what they do and must be committed to their quest.  So it is with teachers.  They must tenaciously claw away at the fetters that hobble a student’s ability to learn.  They must be determined to run the race even if the odds of them winning, or even finishing, are against them.  Great teachers, the ones whom I visited as a member of evaluation teams for Golden Apple and the ones who are out there, unsung and unnoticed, know that education doesn’t end on May 23 each year.  It is a lifetime experience that cannot be extinguished until the heart stops beating.

One of my favorite events of the Olympics is the marathon.  It is a grueling twenty-six mile run though a city and the countryside, ending in Olympic Stadium to the cheers of thousands of spectators.  Education is a marathon.  You try to pace yourself the best you can, but you inevitably speed up, slow down, fall, get up, and, scratched and bleeding, triumphantly advance to the finish line at the end of the school year.  What we have done the past decade is redefine and reconfigure the marathon into an interminable series of sprints, in which students and teacher run frenetically to a series of data-collecting tests, only to pant and wheeze for a few minutes before sprinting to the next short-range destination.  In theory, eventually, you will get to the finish line.  However, in doing so, education loses its grace, pacing, and artistry.  We have lost much by ignoring the fact that a child’s education is a marathon, not the limit, as x approaches infinity, of a series of sprints.

Next blog:  The “Plate Man of Argentina”

I taught and administered high school for about thirty-two years, plenty enough time to be able to say that “I have seen it all.”  Au contraire.  A few years ago, I retired from the classroom and happily worked as a volunteer with the wonderful Golden Apple Foundation, helping to select New Mexico’s top teachers.  This year, quite out of the blue, I was asked to teach geometry to a class of eighth graders at Camino Real Middle School in Las Cruces.  Having been a teacher of high school aged young adults for years, I figured dealing with younger kids would be a piece of cake.  As the school year opened and I found myself immersed in middle school, my eyes opened wide like a five-year-old walking alone through the darkened venomous snake exhibit at the zoo.  There they were so darn many twelve-year-olds in the hall, all in constant motion and in so many sizes.  They careened off each other like bumper cars at the carnival.  And worst of all, they didn’t quite get my repertoire of jokes that worked perfectly well with seniors.  A nagging and lingering question danced like an apparition before my eyes:  after being out of the loop for seven years, could I be a successful math teacher again?

I can hardly count the number of times I have begun the school year standing in front of a group of kids, their faces intent and excited, but all the time sizing you up.  This time was more like the first time I opened a school year some thirty-nine years ago.  Though I outwardly brimmed with confidence, there was a singular question floating around the back of my mind, now a few neurons lighter than when I was twenty-three.  I kept having flashbacks to the 1978 film “Piranha,” halfway expecting them to swarm toward me and consume my flesh as I yell helplessly for security.  But they didn’t.

Like riding the proverbial bicycle, I remembered how to make a seating chart, hand out books, discuss the classroom rules, and go over the escape route for a fire drill.  It was new; it was fresh; it was something different.  Though I was to teach only this one class, the principal was generous enough to assign me a classroom all to myself.  I would begin the task of customizing it to reflect my personality.  And with a little bit of luck and whole lot of work, I would be ready to “Hansenize” the kids and teach the heck out of geometry to eighth graders.  The battle was joined.

Next installment:  It is an Olympic year.