With more than 55 years of combined experience in the classroom, four San Bernardino County Teachers of the Year have been named and will be honored by the County Board of Education during a ceremony in October.
The teachers will be recognized during a ceremony on Oct. 9 at the County Schools' Roy C Hill Education Center in San Bernardino. Each of this year's recipients also will be honored by SchoolsFirst Federal Credit Union, which is a sponsor of the County Teachers of the Year program.
This year's County Teachers of the Year are:
• Laura Gallardo, a Career Technical Education teacher at Arroyo Valley High School in the San Bernardino City Unified School District;
• Carlos Gonzalez, a seventh- and eighth grade English and arts/media teacher at Edison Academy of Differentiated Learning in the Ontario-Montclair School District;
• Theresa Pearce, a third-grade teacher at Shadow Hills Elementary School in the Fontana Unified School District;
• Aaron Stafford, who teaches physics and robotics at Ontario High School in the Chaffey Joint Union High School District.
"We applaud the incredible commitment and dedication shown by these teachers in support of their students, schools and communities," County Superintendent Ted Alejandre said. "On behalf of the more than 18,600 teachers in public schools in our county, we salute their efforts to provide the best educational opportunities for students in their classrooms and at their schools."
The four teachers were nominated by their individual districts and reviewed by a county panel that made the final selections. This year's award recipients will compete in the California Teacher of the Year event, which will announce its recipients later this year.
Following is a biography of each of this year's County Teacher of the Year recipients:
Gallardo has 15 years of experience teaching in Career Technical Education at the high school level. At Arroyo Valley, she has established a California Partnership Academy and provides work-based learning in the area of solar power. The program has been recognized as a distinguished academy by the California Department of Education. Pam Kempthorne, director of College and Career Readiness and Linked Learning for San Bernardino City Unified, says Gallardo has helped establish internships for her students and provides outstanding educational opportunities for her students. Gallardo says her ability to teach is "a gift." "I tell my students if something is hard, you are probably doing it right," she says. "The world of instant gratification does no favors to education. Students need to have inner strength to achieve excellence. This shapes my style of teaching."
With 12 years teaching in the Ontario-Montclair School District, Gonzalez knows through first-hand experience about helping his students being resilient and strong-minded in pursuit of their educations. Having been a high school dropout before getting married and pursuing the education that made him a teacher, Gonzalez says seeing students learn provides personal rewards to him. "I remind myself that I do not simply perform the job of a teacher. I also impact students' lives," he says. Edison Principal Jennifer Berry says Gonzalez's strong work ethic and high standards he sets in the classroom have made a tremendous impact on the academic success of his students. "(Mr. Gonzalez) has further contributed in numerous ways to teachers beyond his classroom, presenting at district trainings for gifted education and serving as a spotlight teacher in our school district," she says.
Most third-grade classrooms don't feature a piano, but Theresa Pearce's classroom at Shadow Hills Elementary is anything but ordinary. Pearce, who has 19 years of experience in elementary education, enjoys starting the school day with a song for students to increase their energy levels. She says school needs to be a fun place to learn. "Teaching is creating experiences," she says. "The more experiences students have, the more they will remember school in a positive light. Teaching to me is also developing and discovering hidden talents in our students." As the district's associate superintendent of Student Services, J. Oscar Duenas says Pearce's enthusiasm and positive outlook about the teaching profession is admirable. "She is constantly trying to learn from her colleagues and searches for better ways of improving herself and re-igniting the spark that inspired her to become an educator," Duenas says.
As a former engineer, Stafford embraces the concept of "redeeming failure," having his students take chances with their work and then learn from their mistakes. As a teacher in physics, robotics and engineering, Stafford has overseen tremendous growth in science interest in his nine years in the classroom. "I often tell my students that the engineer's mantro is to 'fail fast and fail often.' In education, failure means something different to most students (with grades)," he says. "Since becoming a teacher, this difference has become very clear to me, and I work daily to try to redeem failure." His impact on the Ontario High campus has been tremendous, Principal Eduardo Zaldivar says. "(He) has been a pioneer in the area of science, engineering and robotics ... (his) work with students is something marvelous to watch."