Varied Path to Teacher of Year Ex-Seamstress Shapes Young Minds at Daisy Gibson School

By KAREN MAESHIRO

PALMDALE – Marianne Fonvergne sewed drapes for movies, worked in manufacturing and for a while considered a medical career.

But Fonvergne found education to be her niche, and now she has been named Keppel Union School District’s Teacher of the Year.

Fonvergne, who teaches a kindergarten-first grade class at Daisy Gibson School, has worked for the district for 17 years — the past 10 as a teacher.

“I started as a recreation aide. Then I was an instructional aide and then a clerk in the office, all at Lake Los Angeles School. That’s when the bug bit me. I decided I really liked it,” said Fonvergne, 49, of Palmdale.

“I liked working with the kids. Even on a bad day, there’s something funny and good. They say something that just takes you by surprise. Once I was working with a seventh-eighth combination class, and a student said: ‘Is that all? That’s easy.’ It was like, ‘Oh, I reached him.’”

Colleen Morinaka’s kindergartner daughter has been in Fonvergne’s class since December and has already shown progress in reading, the mother said.

“I think she is an excellent teacher. She always seems to have the attention of the kids. My daughter is always coming home bragging about what she has learned,” Morinaka said. “I think a lot of that just comes from the teacher.”

Principal Michael Perkins said Fonvergne is a teacher who exhibits great patience and has a sense of humor.

“This school is very much about team and working together. She embodies that to the highest degree,” Perkins said.

“She conducts a great classroom, full of care and compassion. Yet, she’s serious and works the kids hard.”

The daughter of a stay-at-home mom and a father who worked for McDonnell Douglas aerospace, Fonvergne stayed at home before trying her hand at various jobs.

For several months, she worked at Universal Studios, where she sewed big palm tree fronds for Olivia Newton-John’s 1980 “Xanadu” and bedspreads and curtains for Lily Tomlin’s “The Incredible Shrinking Woman” (1981).

She then worked in manufacturing for three years at Litton in Woodland Hills.

Later, while working as an aide at Keppel, she went back to school with a medical career as her goal. She kept that goal for about a year while taking classes, but after working in a Palmdale clinic’s urgent-care unit, she changed her mind.

Once, she used the word “stitches,” and the doctor corrected her. “He said: ‘It’s sutures. Stitches are what seamstresses do.’ I didn’t like his attitude,” Fonvergne said. “I had more fun with kids.”

She already had submitted her resignation letter as a school district aide, so she called the principal to ask to stay.

“She was very happy to rip up my letter,” Fonvergne said.

“I enjoy the excitement that little kids have. You give them crayons and construction paper, tell them what they are making, and they are thrilled to pieces,” Fonvergne said.

Fonvergne went to night school to get her bachelor’s degree in liberal arts from the Antelope Valley campus of California State University, Bakersfield. She also has a master’s degree in curriculum and instruction.

Fonvergne has lived in the Antelope Valley for 23 years. She and her husband, Roger, who owns a fire alarm systems business, have been married for 27 years. They have two sons and a daughter, ages 26, 24 and 21.

karen.maeshiro@dailynews.com

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