Teacher of The Year

Betsy Rogers can't remember a time when she didn't want to teach.

Photo by Jeff Roberts

As a child, she lined up her dolls in front of a chalkboard to play school. Family stories about her grandmother's teaching experiences provided additional inspiration.

Now Rogers, the 2003 Teacher of the Year, hopes her story will inspire others to teach, especially in high-poverty schools.

"I would love to see us get our best teachers in our neediest schools," says Rogers, a first- and second-grade teacher. "The reward is the difference you can make for the children."

For most of her 22-year career, Rogers has taught at Leeds Elementary School, a Title I school in rural Jefferson County, Alabama. As a beginning teacher, Rogers says she was unaware of the extreme poverty and sometimes abusive home lives her students faced. So she made her classroom a nurturing environment where her students could concentrate on learning.

Rogers pioneered a program that groups students with the same teacher during first and second grades. The approach provides stability and recognizes that all students don't learn in the same way or at the same time, she says. Consequently, Rogers has more freedom to develop teaching strategies to suit her students' individual learning styles.

"Each child is like a rosebud," says Rogers, quoting her own first-grade teacher. "They don't always bloom at the same time, but the last bloom is just as pretty as the first."

--Kristen Loschert

Honor Thy Father

School psychologist Tim Dwyer would do just about anything for his dad--even face down Hell's Gate.

In July, Dwyer embarked on a seven-day tribute to his late father as he kayaked nearly 300 miles around Long Island to raise awareness for Alzheimer's disease. During the journey, Dwyer endured hours of endless paddling and blistered hands as he traveled along the East River. He encountered the most treacherous part of his trip the first day: a section of whirlpools and currents so strong local boaters dubbed it Hell's Gate. "My father passed away from Alzheimer's, and this was a way to honor and acknowledge my father as well as do a sport that I love," says Dwyer, a national kayak champion from Jamestown, Rhode Island.

Dwyer spent almost a year training for the event, sponsored by the Long Island Alzheimer's Foundation (LIAF). He hopes his efforts bring attention to the support services that organizations such as LIAF offer patients and their families.

"When my father had the disease, there were none of those services available. My mother had to deal with it all alone," he says. "Now, the quality of life is better for those families involved with the Foundation. I want that for everyone who has the disease."

--K.L.

ESP of the Year

"I've always believed my role as custodian was to support the teachers and the other support personnel in anything they needed to do to make sure kids learn," says Martin Meyer, head custodian at Fernan Elementary School in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. "I've felt that I need to be of service."

For Meyer, the 2003 NEA Education Support Professional of the Year, service means much more than tending to the physical and aesthetic needs of his school building.

Meyer serves his fellow ESPs as treasurer of the Coeur d'Alene Education Association, a wall-to-wall local where he is the first ESP to hold a leadership role.

He lobbies state and national legislators for increased funding for public education and speaks out about the need for bargaining rights for ESPs. He has pushed the local school board to improve its staffing policy for school custodians and mobilized parents to lobby their legislators. But Meyer's favorite activity is singing and playing his guitar for the preschool and kindergarten students at his school. Hearing the students sing along makes all the hard work worth it.

"I just take things one day at a time," he says. "If you don't let the negative things build up, you can enjoy the positives--and there are a lot of positive things in education."

--K.L.

Behind Locked Doors

Retired South Carolina member Fannie Simmons takes to the radio waves each week with information and inspiration for county jail inmates.

A few years back, Simmons was saddened when she went to visit a relative in the Marion County Jail. "I saw in prisoners' faces what confinement had done to them," says Simmons. "And these were not faces of hope."

So Simmons vowed to reach out to jail inmates. She contacted the manager of a local radio station that broadcasts gospel music and religious programming, who gave her the green light to create a program to serve the inmates.

Two years later, Simmons' show, "Behind Locked Doors," broadcasts each Saturday on WJAY radio in Mullins, South Carolina. Simmons reads inspirational poetry, some of which she writes, and interviews guests with advice or encouragement for inmates.

Simmons meets inmates who listen to her show when she volunteers to teach Sunday school at the jail. She says they've expressed their gratitude to her, as have other members of the community--some of whom ask for copies of her poems. "I feel like I'm helping," says Simmons. "Making a difference for people with tough lives makes me feel better about myself."

--Matt Simon

Got a Tip?

Do you have an interesting story idea? Contact Kristen Loschert, section editor, at kloschert@nea.org.