Four Named 2003 Teachers of the Year

From the Department of Public Instruction

Wisconsin’s elementary, middle/junior high, high school, and special services Teachers of the Year for 2003-04 are:

• Barbara C. Johnson, a kindergarten teacher at Irving Elementary School in the West Allis-West Milwaukee School District. Johnson will represent the state in the national Teacher of the Year competition.
• Antonia “Toni” Velure, an 8th-grade science and reading teacher at Dewayne Meyer Middle School in the River Falls School District.
• Jeff Hicken, an agricultural education teacher at Sauk Prairie High School.
• Peggy Trainor, a daily living and skills teacher for elementary through high school students at the Wisconsin School for the Visually Handicapped (WSVH) in Janesville.

The four were among 86 Kohl Teacher Fellowship recipients honored last spring and were chosen by a statewide selection committee for the Teacher of the Year honor for their instructional leadership and ability to inspire and motivate students. Later this month, the same committee will choose one of the four to represent Wisconsin in the National Teacher of the Year program.

“As we work toward our New Wisconsin Promise of staffing every classroom with a quality teacher, we must recognize those who inspire not only their students but also those who have recently entered the profession,” State Superintendent Elizabeth Burmaster said. “We need these outstanding individuals mentoring new teachers and sharing their enthusiasm and expertise with experienced educators.”

Elementary School Teacher of the Year Barbara Johnson

“Since I have only nine months to make a lifelong impression on my students, I teach with a sense of urgency,” wrote Barbara Johnson in her Kohl Teacher Fellowship application materials. “Any time I spend with a child is an opportunity for learning to occur.”

Johnson, who earned National Board Certification in 2000, strives to make her curriculum “exciting, interesting and relevant,” believing that a child’s personal connection to a subject “deepens their level of learning.” She understands that children learn even when they struggle. “I challenge my students and encourage them to take risks and try different approaches to situations. When these approaches are unsuccessful, I show them that learning occurs regardless of the outcome.”

Among Johnson’s innovative projects is Students With Elders Enjoying Themselves (SWEET), a program that partners her kindergartners with residents of a West Allis senior care facility. When one of the residents died, the experience became part of the class’ social studies curriculum. “Children learned to celebrate the life of our 97-year-old friend and recalled the memories he and his kindergarten friend shared,” Johnson related.

“Bedtime Books, Math Bags, Art Suitcases and Theme Bags” is a Johnson-created program that has her kindergartners taking home collections of materials and literature each day to share with their families. “This brings the classroom into the home with materials that might not be available to everyone,” she explains.

Her “Love Letters” project prompts students to create cards using various art processes; the cards are sent to patients at Children’s Hospital in Milwaukee.
In addition to myriad school and community roles, Johnson mentors prospective and new teachers in the 4-year-old kindergarten program as well as early childhood special education. Her principal, Margaret Crowley, describes her as a “supportive colleague, a revered teacher, and a leader in all aspects of learning.”

Johnson has been a kindergarten teacher at Irving Elementary School for 14 years; prior to that, she taught learning disabled, cognitively disabled, and emotionally disturbed elementary-age children for 17 years. She earned a bachelor of science degree from Radford (VA) University and a master’s degree in education from Clemson (SC) University. She also teaches both a graduate and undergraduate education course at Alverno College in Milwaukee.

Middle/Junior High School Teacher of the Year Antonia Velure

“The most important thing I can teach my students is to respect each other’s ideas, learn to work side-by-side, and become problem solvers,” Antonia “Toni” Velure wrote in her Kohl Teacher Fellowship application. It is a philosophy that she models in preparing for her 8th-grade science and reading classes, collaborating with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Marshall Space Flight Center, the KSTP-TV WeatherNet Live program, and the Wisconsin Society of Science Teachers.

Velure strives to personalize her teaching using “student-centered, activity-based, and inquiry lessons. …Each child is asked to learn the basic material, but then is expected to go a step further and make that learning relevant to his/her own life,” explains Velure. She incorporates drama, art, and music in her lessons, often appearing before her classes as a famous scientist or special guest speaker.

The Invention Convention is one of Velure’s most innovative projects, stimulating her students to envision and complete an invention. They must keep activity journals; manage a budget; and build, test, and market their products or ideas. In so doing, “they need to research an inventor, dead or alive”; conduct a “patent search and application”; and create “a working model of their idea.”

Velure is also the advisor for Let’s Educate About Diversity (LEAD), helping students become socially aware of cultural differences, and of the middle school Drama Club.

“In this day of multimedia entertainment and this age of savvy teenagers, it is a priceless moment when a teacher can inspire her students as Antonia Velure does,” wrote Christine Pace, a 7th-grade science teacher and 2001 Milken National Educator of the Year recipient from Wisconsin Rapids. “[She] is the epitome of what a teacher should be in the 21st century.”

Velure has taught 8th-grade science and reading at Meyer Middle School since 1994; prior to that, she taught 4th grade and junior high school math and science at St. Patrick School in Hudson for 11 years. She earned a bachelor’s degree in elementary education from the University of Wisconsin-River Falls and a master’s degree in education from the College of St. Mary in Winona, MN. She also teaches at the College for Kids and Teen University at UW-River Falls.

High School Teacher of the Year Jeff Hicken

“The best way to inspire a student’s learning is to lead by example, showing excitement and interest in every lesson I teach,” wrote Jeff Hicken in his Kohl Teacher Fellowship application. “It’s very humbling for me to think students respect who I am. In fact, I am often embarrassed when students compliment me because I feel I am only doing what I love to do.”

What Hicken loves to do is share agriculture and agriscience learning opportunities with students year-round, both as a teacher and as FFA adviser. One of every eight students at Sauk Prairie High School is enrolled in the agriculture education program, and 200-300 elementary school students join them in Farm City Day, Food for America Day, Farm Safety Day Camp, and Village Beautification Month activities supervised by Hicken.

Hicken has expanded the scope of the high school’s agriculture education program to encourage interest and participation among students who might not have taken agriculture courses in the past. His Leadership and Group Dynamics, Fish and Wildlife, and Leadership for a Growing Planet classes have successfully attracted those students; because of high demand, the latter class—an elective for eighth-graders— grew from one section to four sections, enrolling nearly 100 students.

“The agriculture program has taken on the character and values of its leader, Mr. Hicken,” wrote Sauk Prairie School District Superintendent Tom Andres. “His integrity, enthusiasm, high expectations, work ethic, and professionalism create an atmosphere in which kids flourish.”

Hicken has taught at Sauk Prairie High School since completing his bachelor of science degree in agriculture education at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls in 1998. In 2001, he received the Outstanding Young Member Award from the Wisconsin Association of Vocational Agriculture Instructors (WAVAI). In just five years, his students have earned 12 State FFA Degrees; an American FFA Degree; 17 gold-rated, eight silver-rated, and a bronze-rated proficiency award; and a Star National Chapter rating, among other achievements.

Special Services Teacher of the Year Peggy Trainor

“Each day I learn as much as the students I teach,” wrote Peggy Trainor in her Kohl Teacher Fellowship application. “My daily living skills classroom is a place where it is safe to make a mistake, learn from the mistake, and be encouraged to turn those mistakes into positive learning experiences.”

Working with visually impaired students from kindergarten through high school, Trainor describes the Janesville community (and beyond) as an integral part of her students’ learning environment.

Trainor’s classes consist of students with varying visual challenges and a wide range of skill levels, each “actively engaged in a specialized curriculum.” Students plan meals, choose field trips, and select appropriate adaptive equipment to complete tasks based on their needs. “Because I consider each student’s home an extension of my classroom, families are invaluable sources of support,” she says.

Trainor’s Daily Living Skills Challenge, recently incorporated by the American Printing House for the Blind into a nationwide curriculum for students with visual impairments, is an Olympics-style competition of laundry folding, money counting and sorting, clean sweeping, baking, and completing an obstacle course to set a table.

Her “This Old Apartment” project grew out of several students’ need to experience independent living. Wisconsin School for the Visually Handicapped apartments in need of renovation offered the students an opportunity to design, clean, paint, and buy equipment and furnishings for an apartment specifically adapted for people with visual impairments.

“While her classroom has been in Janesville, Peggy’s impact has been statewide — not just because [her] students come from throughout the state, but because the majority of her students return to spend most of their educational careers in local school districts,” wrote colleague Ken Tapp. “Former students consistently list Peggy’s functional daily living skills classes and activities among the most beneficial learning experiences of their entire education.”

Trainor began as a child-care counselor at WSVH in 1984; she has since served WSVH students from across the state as an elementary / middle school teacher, early childhood / exceptional educational needs (EC / EEN) teacher, and daily living skills teacher. She earned a bachelor of science degree in early childhood education at the University of Wisconsin-Stout in Menomonie, a master’s degree in EC / EEN from UW-Eau Claire, and teacher certification in vision impairments from Northern Illinois University in Dekalb.

Posted September 5, 2003