Ville Platte Rotary Club hears from Evangeline Parish Teachers of the Year

By: HEATHER BOGARD
Lifestyles Editor

January 12, Meeting
Evangeline Parish School Board Superintendent and Rotarian Toni Hamlin addressed the January 12, meeting of the Ville Platte Rotary Club to introduce her three guest speakers, the parish elementary, junior high and high school teachers of the year. She stated that a lot of good things are going on in the parish and congratulated the three winners, who are now moving on to the state competition.
Before the three teachers were introduced, Grace Sibley (Title One Supervisor with the EPSB) thanked Hamlin and the teachers for their excellent work and their positive impact on student learning in the parish. Sibley thanked the Rotary Club for its involvement in the Choices program and their contribution to the education of the youth of the community. She stated that the candidates for teachers of the year were nominated by each school in the parish and interviewed by a panel of 10 judges who had a very difficult task in selecting a winner in each category. The teachers were judged based on the five biggest impacts on student learning: being a school leader, being a school learner, community involvement and family involvement. The three teachers were then introduced and each briefly addressed the Rotary members.
Yvonne Johnson, elementary special education instructor at Pine Prairie High School, admitted it is very hard to prepare children with special learning needs to be able to take and pass the same testing as other students and stressed that the classroom is more than just testing. She shared that she finds teaching special education very rewarding and that those students can succeed with support from their teachers and families.
Lisa Jack, seventh grade ELA teacher at Vidrine Elementary School, said she knew that teaching was her calling and has run with it. She noted that teaching has evolved over the years and that students in a junior high Common Core setting will be actively moving and holding conversations in order to work together. Jack said that students have to learn and discuss and the teacher is there to guide and clear up any questions students may have. She also said that under Common Core, students cannot just give the answers, they must be able to restate questions, answer the questions, prove their answers, site text to support their answers and explain and elaborate on the questions and responses.
Alice LeJeune, social studies and US history teacher at Ville Platte High School, said she originally taught for six months and then worked in marketing for Sallie Mae for a while before returning to the classroom when the position at Ville Platte High became available. In her classroom, she takes the black and white text from the books and brings it to life for the students to touch and buy into what they are learning in history class. For example, she makes games out of acting out scenarios students are learning in a lesson. In this way, students are buying into what they are learning and want to keep learning. With her background, * treats her classroom as “consumer-based” and says that the goal is to satisfy her “consumers.” This is shown in the end result of them passing the class at the end of the school year. She also said that teaching is a very rewarding career and Evangeline Parish has extremely supportive leadership from top to bottom.