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Putnam Teachers Win Prestigious Achievement Award

Posted on: Thursday, 9 March 2006, 00:00 CST

By Shelby Young

syoung@cnpapers.com 348-4806 Two innovative Putnam County elementary schoolteachers were among only 12 state educators recently named as winners of the Arch Coal Teacher Achievement Award. Barbara Black of West Teays Elementary and Pat Dawson of Conner Street Elementary, both of whom have been spotlighted previously in Metro Putnams Classroom Corner feature, are recipients of the honor. The Arch Coal Teacher Achievement Award is one of West Virginias longest running and most esteemed competitive teacher award programs. Barbara Black, who teaches third grade at West Teays Elementary, has a bachelors degree from West Virginia State College and a masters from Marshall University. Last summer she joined an elite group of 154 West Virginia teachers when she obtained National Board of Professional Teaching Standards certification. West Teays Elementary Principal Bruce Faulkner said he was not surprised in the least at Blacks being chosen. He praised her concern for meeting students needs and requiring them to be the best that they can be. He said the 11-year veteran teacher leads her students by her example of hard work and accepting noting but the best. Most importantly, Faulkner added, she has not only a teachers mind, but a teachers heart. Pat Dawson, a fourth-grade teacher, holds bachelors and masters degrees from Marshall University. Jerry L. Hurley, the principal at Conner Street, described Dawson as creative, conscientious and caring. He noted that when educators gather together, they often take about that teacher who made a difference in their own lives. Shes exactly that kind of teacher, Hurley said. She is an extraordinary educator who enriches the lives of the children in her care and prepares them to continue on a path toward excellence. To put it simply, shes great. When Metro Putnam visited with her, the questions and answers were bouncing back and forth in Dawsons classroom like a can of loose tennis balls. Her head and arms in motion, Dawson pointed at one fourth-grader, then another. She was keeping the discussion going about the exploits of Spanish explorers in America. Earlier, she used a similar technique as she encouraged her students to share the results of a science experiment about how the height of a ramp will affect how fast a marble will roll. They had been scattered about Dawsons room at Conner Street Elementary School in study groups of three, measuring distances and recording results. Some of the conclusions they came up with were great, she said later after her kids had gone for the day. She always encourages her students to work cooperatively. I cant think of a single career where they dont have to work in a group, at least sometimes, Dawson said. The 25-year veteran teacher has enjoyed a varied career, teaching developmentally disabled students and working with autistic young adults in Hawaii before returning to Putnam County. She resisted the idea of teaching in a conventional classroom situation for many years; although when she was a child, her parents always told her she was meant to teach. In the past 15 years at Conner Street, Dawson has moved from grade to grade. Its been good for me to know how each grade learns and thinks, she said. It keeps me from getting bored. She also avoids boredom by serving as a scorer on the West Virginia Writing Assessment for the West Virginia Department of Education. Dawson has been trained to teach English as a second language, serves as hostess to Japanese teaching interns and studied at Colonial Williamsburg. In addition, she sings in her church choir and with the West Virginia Symphony Chorus, as well as being a member of the Museum in the Communitys Board of Directors. Dawson believes that a good classroom teacher must possess the ability to analyze what a student must learn, take it apart and understand how to organize the facts so that a student can learn. Then I get to see the light bulbs go off in their heads when they understand, she said. For fourth-graders, who are reaching the age for more complex behavior, the biggest challenge sometimes is learning how to learn and how to study, Dawson believes. These are all new concepts in that they have to begin to master in the fourth grade, and maybe in the last part of third grade, she noted. There is some much change in them during this year. When a class starts in the fall, I always a little surprised because they arent at the level of the kids who left in the spring. Theres that much change, she said. Dawson learns a lot from her students, too. Its nice to have a child present a point of view that I hadnt considered before, she said. Not a day goes by in the classroom without an ah hah! moment, she stated. Putnam County Superintendent of Schools Chuck Hatfield said the awards come as no surprise to him. Barb Black and Pat Dawson show every day what were all about in Putnam County schools, he said. Im so proud and pleased for them that their excellence in teaching has been recognized and rewarded. Some traits Black and Dawson share in common, such as a strong desire to keep students challenged. However, their teaching styles are as different as their rooms. At West Teays Elementary, Blacks room is alive in more ways than might be expected. In fact, not all the youngsters in Tootie Blacks class are human. When Metro Putnam came to her classroom, she introduced a guinea pig named Patches, a hamster named Fluffy, a tarantula, an entire family of hissing cockroaches featuring very young roach babies, plus butterflies in their own habitat. The animals are one of many methods Black uses to engage her third-graders at West Teays Elementary School. I believe that all kids are gifted, she said. My job is to find out what will bring out those gifts. They love the animals. Some of them are not particularly good at reading or math, but they can get interested the animals. Blacks award-winning teaching methods almost always return her students to the basics of reading, writing and counting. At the third-grade level, her class has been studying geology. Black provided each of them with a cupcake. Underneath the icing the cakes were baked with differently colored layers and a chocolate center. They use these straws to take core drillings, she said. Then they write reports on the layers they discover and finally draw a cross section of what they believe the cupcake would look like. Then we cut it in half and see how close they have come.

Black believes that when class is fun for me, its fun for them. She began teaching 12 years ago after a career in business as a secretary and office manager. While she was a business administration major, she took an education course which influenced her career change. It was that and also teaching children in Sunday school that caused me to realize I wanted to be a teacher. She grins. Actually, I made more as a secretary. She taught at Conner Street, Buffalo and Rock Branch before settling on third grade at West Teays. These kids are old enough to take responsibility, but young enough to be enthusiastic, Black believes. She also expects responsibility from her students. I tell them that I give 110 percent and I expect them to do the same, she said. You get what you expect from them in both behavior and academic performance. The words she hates to hear from a student are I cant. As a consequence, at the first school day of each year, Black has each of her pupils write out a list of things they cant do. Then in a ceremony she calls the class funeral, they bury their lists in a hole in front of the school. Then, for the rest of the year, if they tell me they cant do a certain thing, I remind them that they buried their cant dos on the first day of school, Black said. Her teaching abilities have caused her to be chosen to the teacher cadre for math, to serve as a mentor for other teachers. She has earned Nationally Certified Teacher status and received the Intel Master Teacher for her work with computers. In that vein, Blacks third-graders learn to prepare Microsoft PowerPoint presentation on their classroom computers. She has also organized an after-school computer club that is usually so filled up she sometimes has to organize a second club. Now were considering adding parents to the club, she said. When shes not teaching, Black can be found at home with her husband, teen-age son and a host of animals. We have 14 horses, two llamas, beagles, coon hounds and other hunting dogs. My husband and I enjoy hunting with them, she said. In addition to the honor of being named to this elite group, Black and Dawson received trophies, classroom plaques, personal cash awards and cash prizes for their schools. The awards were presented on March 2 by Robert W. Shanks, president of Arch Coals eastern operations. He was accompanied by Gov. Joe Manchin, First Lady Gayle Manchin, Secretary of Education and the Arts Kay Goodwin, Deputy State Superintendent of Schools Dr. Jack McClanahan and West Virginia Education Association President Charles Delauder. To receive the award, teachers in grades K through 12 must be nominated by a student, peer or community member and must provide information on their classroom and professional practice, as well as furnishing numerous letters of recommendation. A blue-ribbon panel of former recipients judges the nominations and makes the selections.

Source: Charleston Gazette, The

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