When Northwood Excessive College instructor Ben Case noticed a Sacramento cellphone quantity pop up on his cellphone late one latest evening, he had an inkling of who may be calling.
The previous California Academics of the 12 months he’d spoken to mentioned it’d go like this.
However nonetheless, when he picked as much as obtain the information from state Superintendent Tony Thurmond that he was considered one of 5 California academics being acknowledged for this 12 months’s high honor, “my spouse and I each simply type of needed to sit down.”
“I imply, it stopped us in our tracks,” he mentioned.
The educators, chosen out of a pool nominated from every county, are supposed to be “ambassadors for the occupation,” who share their strategies and information with others and characterize training in California. That Case is among the 5 chosen nonetheless “hasn’t sunk in,” he mentioned.
“I completely love what I do,” mentioned Case, an instrumental and music concept instructor at Northwood Excessive. “I’ve labored actually onerous, however that’s as a result of I see a lot reward that comes out of it. And I simply wish to be the instructor that I might wish to have if I had been the scholar.”
Orange County was additionally represented amongst 9 finalists for the annual recognition with Jamie Morgan, a primary grade instructor at Cerritos Elementary College.
Case, who has labored at Northwood Excessive College for 16 years, directs the instrumental music program on campus, overseeing more-than 500 college students throughout 4 orchestras, 4 jazz bands, 4 live performance bands, a marching band and guitar and music concept courses.
In the course of the pandemic, he additionally helped create the curriculum for taking music courses on-line.
A Cal State Fullerton alum, Case mentioned his instructing fashion is an amalgamation of mentors and “inspirational colleagues” he’s labored with over time. In his software for the county Trainer of the 12 months award, he burdened that in his function, “I don’t educate MUSIC. I educate STUDENTS.”
“For years, this has been the inspiration of my instructional philosophy,” he mentioned, “and because the pandemic started, it has turn into my day by day mantra.”
One in every of his proudest moments professionally was organizing a summer time live performance in June for all the Northwood alums who didn’t get to take part in spring and end-of-the-year performances in 2020 due to the pandemic’s onset. About 60 former orchestra and band college students got here again to rehearse and play earlier than a stay viewers.
A spotlight was “having the ability to join with them and seeing type of the place they had been all at and what they’ve finished,” he mentioned.
“A few of them went on and continued taking part in faculty, a few of them hadn’t touched their instrument because the college shut down,” he mentioned. “However we had been in a position to have that chance once more. It was actually thrilling.”
Irvine Unified College District Superintendent Terry Walker regards Case because the type of instructor who’s “simply keen to do no matter it takes to help their children, and to use his abilities and his ardour for music to encourage different children,” Walker mentioned.
One reminiscence of Case that has caught with Walker is from a faculty day in early 2021, when Walker was visiting Northwood’s campus. It was chilly and windy exterior, however he mentioned Case was there within the college car parking zone below the photo voltaic panels, guiding college students taking part in their devices as music stands blew over and the chilliness picked up.
It was the primary day college students had been allowed to start out utilizing their wind devices once more due to coronavirus precautions, Case mentioned, and whereas some restrictions had been nonetheless in place, he was decided to get college students again to taking part in – a minimum of a few scales.
“He’s any individual who deserves this type of recognition,” Walker mentioned. “He embodies all of the issues that we search for in academics, type of this selfless dedication to their college students and deep appreciation and worth for his or her their abilities, and constructing them and training them alongside and serving to them to realize their highest potential.
“And he simply does it with an unimaginable angle,” Walker added.
Together with his new platform as a Trainer of the 12 months, Case mentioned he needs to be a champion for elevated entry to arts training, an space he sees as serving “as a lever for fairness.”
“All people’s equal, everyone’s voice and experiences are valued within the ensemble,” he mentioned, “and I believe the humanities can actually type of lead the cost to permit college students to heal, enable college students to attach with the fabric, with one another, with the world round them.”
Originally published at Irvine News HQ
No comments:
Post a Comment