People
The Nation's Top Teacher

The Fiftieth National Teacher of the Year is a veteran of 35 years in the classroom. Her 145 AP English students know not to expect the ordinary from this imaginative teacher.

Marilyn Whirry's passion for teaching and willingness to try new ideas extends to even the way she sets up her classroom. Her Advanced Placement senior students at Mira Costa High in California's Manhattan Beach sit on beanbag chairs, facing each other, to facilitate conversation.

"One year I taught the traditional way, but I knew it didn't work, so I went to the beanbag chairs," Whirry explains. "The unorthodox setup helps the students realize that the class is going to be different. As my classroom was transformed, so was my teaching.''

An English teacher with a master's degree in contemporary literature, Whirry makes it a priority to relate the contemporary to the classics.

"I think it's important for a teacher to keep a totally open mind," Whirry says. "And to always ask, 'Are my students learning the most they possibly can, are they reaching their potential, or do I have to change my teaching style?'"

Whirry believes strongly that an innovative teacher has the power to reach any student. But new teachers, she notes, "despite their high energy and boundless enthusiasm, don't always have the skills or knowledge to develop that energy."

After leading more than 350 professional development seminars, Whirry is convinced that a consistent, long-term program for staff development is essential to creating and maintaining good teachers.

"What I see in these workshops is teachers changing," she says. "If you can change teachers, then you can change kids, because the teachers are going back into their classrooms and doing things differently. It's so important to have teachers who are passionate about their work and their kids."

During her year-long tour as the National Teacher of the Year, Whirry says she'll advocate the importance of teaching teachers.

"We serve a purpose that no other person in society serves,'' notes Whirry. "We aren't parents, but while we're teaching children, we're also helping them help themselves."

President Clinton presented Whirry with the National Teacher of the Year crystal apple at White House ceremonies last May. In July, this life-long NEA member spoke to delegates attending the NEA Representative Assembly in Chicago.

Economics isn't the dismal science to Kali Kurdy's students at Borah High in Boise, Idaho, thanks to an award-winning curriculum unit she's put together. Kurdy's "Economic Summit," an economic trade simulation, recently earned the National Association of Security Dealers National Teaching Award and was also honored with a $20,000 check from the National Council on Economic Education.

Kurdy developed the simulation as a way to teach her students about trade in and among the Commonwealth of Independent States. But her classes enjoyed enacting the trade sessions so much that she expanded the program's focus to all international trade. Kurdy then included other schools in the district, encouraging students to work together. Today, the Economic Summit is a statewide affair, impacting more than 3,000 students from 30 schools each year.

Students work together to research the social, political, and economic situation of an assigned country, evaluate its strengths and weaknesses, and then develop specific goals to improve the standard of living for its people.

Acting as economic advisors, the student teams negotiate with each other to work out beneficial trade agreements, all the while competing for scarce global resources.

"The students learn a wealth of economic information,"says Kurdy. "But it also allows them to learn to articulate their position and to bargain. The compromise and cooperation are worth as much as the economics."

NEA's National ESP of the Year

As most students are scrambling to get to their homeroom class at the tone of the tardy bell, Union City (N.J.) attendance officer Richard Malizia is on the streets looking for kids who should be in school, but aren't.

Recently named NEA's educational support person of the year, Malizia is the lifeline between teachers and those students who would otherwise rarely see the inside of a classroom.

"Poor attendance is one indicator of a problem," says Malizia, who has served on the NEA Board of Directors. "If we can get to that problem early and solve it, we can enhance student achievement."

An example: Malizia found that one student chronically absent only had two pairs of pants--and one pair had a hole.

"When he had to wear that pair, he didn't come to school because he was too embarrassed," says Malizia. "So we bought him a new pair of pants: problem solved!"

"I'm in the unique position of being able to go into homes and bring information back to the schools," Malizia said. "Most attendance officers live in the communities we work in, so we know the kids and their families."

Malizia has remained dedicated to public education for 25 years, as an attendance officer, a janitor, and a teacher's advocate. He's helped form an alliance between Union City teachers and school support personnel.

"Once teachers see how ESP can help them, they appreciate our roles,'' Malizia says. "ESP care deeply for the children we serve."

On a Mission To Build Character

Barbara Lewis is a teacher--and an author--on a mission. She's determined, through her writing, to bombard students with positive role models.

"Youngsters are inundated with hundreds of thousands of negative influences from the media, politicians, sports figures, and elsewhere," says this Utah teacher, who coordinates her Park City school district's program for high-achieving students. "We have to counteract that."

The action-oriented Lewis, who thrives on conducting community problem-solving classes with youngsters, says whenever she feels the need for new material to use with students, she ends up writing a book.

"As soon as I finish one," she laughs, "I come up with another."

Her seventh and latest, Being Your Best: Character Building for Kids 7-10, is chock full of real-life role models for character and community service.

The examples include a Utah boy who gave a homeless man his brand-new basketball shoes and a Mexican girl who bravely told her mother the truth about squandering the family's tortilla money on candy.

The book also suggests very concrete steps kids can take at home, at school, and in their communities to become honest, caring, and responsible citizens.

"Character development begins when a child is born," says Lewis, the grandmother of three. "We need to teach kids that we all have control over what we become and that we're responsible for what we do."

For more information, call 1/800-735-7323.

Teacher Guides Students to Follow Their Conscience

Letter writing is a powerful but underutilized cornerstone of democracy, Ron Adams believes.

Adams helps his seventh grade language arts students at Broad Meadows Middle School in Quincy, Massachusetts, realize the power of a well-written letter through "Writing Wrongs," a teaching unit he's been using for the past 10 years.

In the unit, students are asked to identify an injustice and write a formal letter to someone they believe can help end it.

The assignment has led students to such varied projects as creating a textbook about World War II's female shipyard workers and opening a floating museum celebrating Quincy's history.

Efforts by students in Adams classes have also freed four Yugoslavian students imprisoned because they asked for bilingual education and built three schools for underprivileged children abroad.

The letters Adams's students have written span the issue spectrum, from local topics like traffic to international concerns over child labor.

"If I forced the students to write about something," he says, "they would stop caring once I closed the grade book."

The kids who learn with Adams care even after they leave his class. Students as old as high school seniors convene every Friday afternoon to continue their projects.

The letter unit began as a way to reach Quincy's increasing immigrant population. Reading and writing about things that "aren't fair," Adams hoped, would help teach the district's diverse students how they should treat each other.

"We used to be known as the school for the housing project kids, and that was deeply insulting," Adams says. "Now Broad Meadows kids have a reputation as historians and activists. It's the change of attitude that has kept me motivated."