blackbOaRd aWaRds fOR TeacheRs
Honoring 16 Outstanding Teachers
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lmost all of us can remember a teacher who took the extra time to inspire us in some way. Many can recall several, which is why every year, Manhattan Media honors outstanding teachers throughout the city with our Blackboard Awards. Sixteen teachers from New York City private, charter and traditional public schools are being honored this year with Blackboards. This year, the 11th for the Blackboards, we received about 1,000 nominations from parents, students, principals and fellow teachers, and the final selections were made by editors and executives from four Manhattan Media publications—Our Town, West Side Spirit, Our Town Downtown and New York Family. One of our honorees, the beloved Jon Goldman at The Bea-
con School, unfortunately died this spring, but we wanted to recognize his extraordinary work over the years. In these pages, you’ll find 16 remarkable stories of teachers, including Susie Kavanaugh at Corlears Elementary School, who empties her classroom every year so her students can decide how to fill it up, and Ross Grosshart, an electrical engineer who changed jobs mid-career so he could teach college-level courses at Brooklyn Tech. Several other Blackboard winners also chose teaching after starting on a different path, and their students and our city are better off because of it. —Josh Rogers, Editor, Backboard Awards
2012 Blackboard Award Winners General excellence cara Beseda Barbara ciner rose coffield lisa Harrelson Susie Kavanaugh laurel nyeboe Tonia Percy lindsay Werner
P.S. 87 Adults and Children in Trust at St. John Divine Weekday School at Riverside Church Success Academy Upper West Corlears Elementary School P.S. 40 P.S. 290 Philosophy Day School
SPecIalTY caTeGOrIeS Special education lois eder
Susan Wagner High School
Monday, June 18, 2012
english Jonathan Goldman (posthumous) The Beacon School Sammie Smith Columbia Secondary School for Math, Science
5:30 p.m., Reception 6:15 p.m., Awards Presentation
Foreign language Bernadette robine
International School of Brooklyn
Humanities andrew adler
Hosted by: Alex Witt
Lab Middle School for Collaborative Studies
MSNBC anchor and NBC correspondent
Math Marija Kero Dr. Warren Wollman
Equality Charter School Rodeph Sholom High School
Science/Technology ross Grosshart
Brooklyn Technical High School
at Fordham University Law School, James McNally Theatre
cOnGraTUlaTIOnS anD THanK YOU TO THe nOMIneeS, WInnerS anD all neW YOrK cITY TeacHerS! 1 6 • O UR TOWN DOW NTOW N • June 14, 2 012
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1 6 • O UR TOWN • J une 14 , 2 012
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