Tuesday, August 08, 2000
Teachers tapped for awards
Two other local educators earned same honors for '99
By Sue Kiesewetter
Enquirer contributor
WEST CHESTER TWP. — Two years after winning a National Educator Award for teaching mathematics, Freedom Elementary School teacher Shirley Curtis is a finalist for a presidential award.
This time Mrs. Curtis, of Fairfield, is one of six math teachers in Ohio nominated for the Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching, co-sponsored by the White House and the National Science Foundation.
White Oak Middle School teacher Sandra VanNatta is one of five science teachers from Ohio also nominated. As Ohio nominees, Mrs. Curtis and Mrs. VanNatta will each receive a $750 education grant. Both women are in the running for a $7,500 award. They will be honored at an upcoming meeting of the Ohio Department of Education. Winners of the 2000 Presidential Awards will be chosen by a national selection committee and announced early next year by the White House.
In 1998, Mrs. Curtis was one of four Ohio educators and 160 nationwide to win a $25,000 National Educator Awards from the Santa Monica, Calif.-based Milken Family Foundation. She has been a presenter at the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) convention, her work has been published in the Ohio Journal of School Mathematics,and she was the recipient of the NCTM Future Leaders Award and Greater Cincinnati Council of Teachers mathematics grant.
“I'm just doing what I like to do,” Mrs. Curtis said Monday. “I kind of just do my thing with kids.”
Mrs. VanNatta, of Hanover Township, is an eighth-grade science teacher who is entering her 30th year of teaching with Northwest Local Schools.
She, too, has won numerous awards.
“She's a wonderful, innovative teacher,” said Pat Kramer, science coordinator for the Northwest Local Schools. “She does a lot of hands-on work with her students, constantly bringing new ideas into the district.”
Earlier this year, two teachers from Southwest Ohio received 1999 presidential awards in the same competition. Sycamore High School teacher Bernadette Marie Clemens-Walatka won a science award and Mary Jo Doebling, a Mount Healthy High School teacher, wons for math.
They are among more than 3,000 science and math teachers to be recognized since the program began in 1983.
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