Unlike retired baseball players, teachers don’t have a Hall of Fame. They should. No doubt the very first English teacher inductee would be my Marilyn.
Those who have worked with Marilyn know that she is the star that guides the New Haven District when it comes to teaching English. She has awards to prove it, including Alameda County’s Teacher of the Year in 2000. She was also among the very first English teachers in the Bay Area to achieve National Board Certification.
That said, Marilyn has never judged her efficacy by the awards she has earned. She has always measured her effectiveness as a teacher by her daily impact on students. No teacher has so consistently, energetically, and brilliantly helped her students learn to read, write, speak, listen, and think. Marilyn was doing Common Core long before it had a name or was in vogue. As a result, she’s had a profound impact on her students.
Marilyn’s New Haven colleagues have been the beneficiaries of her teaching talents, too. She has shared her curriculum with numerous English teachers. She’s taught scores of teachers her pedagogy, especially those who graduated from the Single Subject Partnership Program. Social Sciences colleagues understand that when we iimproved writing on our teams, Marilyn’s models provided the impetus.
In her final year of teaching, Marilyn’s American Literature students scored an 80% average on the benchmark. Her English Learners took the same test at native speakers and did equally well. That’s like batting .400 in the Big Leagues. Now in retirement, Marilyn deserves to be voted into the Teacher Hall of Fame on the first round because there are none better!
