Three finalists for 2015 Fayette County Teacher of the Year have emerged with the highest combined score from three judges who read and scored essay-style applications from 25 contenders.
The finalists are Sean Bennett, Fayette County Alternative School; Lynne Bruschetti, McIntosh High; and Gail Frantz, Peeples Elementary.
Bennett, a language arts teacher at the Fayette County Alternative School, said teaching is more of a calling for him than a career.
His teaching philosophy emphasizes individualized education to meet the learning needs of each student, empowering students to be life-long learners, and creating a safe place for students to learn, discover and grow.
“I have spent the vast majority of my career working with students who were at risk of not being successful because of a multitude of factors, but there is not a single student that I have met that is incapable of reaching their full potential,” Bennett said.
His contributions to education go far beyond the walls of the classroom.
Bennett created the Justice Debate League, a collaborative project with the nonprofit, Hearts to Nourish Hope, and the Department of Juvenile Justice in Fayette and Clayton counties.
The debaters are students who were sentenced by juvenile judges. They compete before a panel consisting of the president of the debate community, the district attorney, and the juvenile justices who originally sentenced the debaters.
Bennett, along with a former student, also co-founded the nonprofit, DREAMWeavers Atlanta, that helps families in need of educational assistance. Three centers throughout Fayette and Clayton counties provide free GED classes and immigration help for families, including ESOL (English Speakers of Other Languages) classes and free legal assistance.
“Great teachers refuse to be bound by the doorway to their classrooms,” Bennett said. “Great teachers are great because they believe that their work can change lives, and that work cannot be contained in one room.”
Bennett has taught in Fayette County for 15 years and worked at both Starr’s Mill High and Whitewater High schools as a language arts teacher before joining the faculty at Fayette County Alternative School.
Lynne Bruschetti teaches ninth grade language arts and tenth grade world literature at McIntosh High.
She primarily credits her mother, who taught at a mission school in New Mexico in the 1940s, for influencing her decision to become an educator. Two influential elementary school teachers weighed in on the decision as well.
“Mrs. Wadley was not a warm and fuzzy teacher, she was all business,” Bruschetti remembers. “Her tanned skin and expensive clothing indicated that she taught by choice, and not necessity. She treated her students with distant respect, and provided me with a solid grammar foundation. I wanted to please Miss Beardsley more than any other teacher in my public education schooling. I can’t pinpoint why, I just liked and respected her.
“These three strong women, my mother and my teachers, made me realize that educators are intelligent and dignified, a profession that is much more than the maddening maxim of ‘those who can’t, teach,” she said.
Teaching is not a job that is neatly packed into an eight-hour workday, Bruschetti added.
She is constantly looking for ways to challenge her students to think independently and develop their own conclusions and viewpoints.
When a former STAR student chose Bruschetti as his 2013 STAR Teacher of the Year, she was shocked. She taught the student as a freshman, and he visited infrequently afterward.
“But when I asked why he chose me as a STAR teacher three years after I taught him, he simply said that I was the first teacher who made him think, and then provided time for students to share their thoughts. It wasn’t my glowing personality, but my intentional methods of encouraging students to think that influenced his decision,” she said.
Bruschetti believes a teacher is a mentor to future leaders. Treating every student as a future leader, she devises weekly situations where they practice the skills of true leaders: analysis, synthesis, creativity, and empathy. Empathy is the skill Bruschetti believes is most important.
“If students are to make an accurate analysis of any given situation, they must be able to empathize with all parties involved,” she said. “It’s difficult to place oneself in another’s situation, but that is what leaders do. True servant leaders are capable of thinking beyond their own limited view of the world.”
Bruschetti has worked as a high school language arts teacher in Fayette County for 30 years. She has taught at McIntosh High for 29 years, and was a teacher at Starr’s Mill High for one year.
Gail Frantz, who teachers fifth grade math and science at Peeples Elementary, was destined to become a teacher.
As a young girl, she enjoyed playing “school” in the basement of her childhood home. Her most memorable Christmas gift was a stand-up chalkboard and a real student desk with an attached chair.
“Forty-five plus years later, I can still recall the smell and feel of the chalk on that old easel,” she said. “The Lord had a plan for me, and He made it very clear. I was destined to become a teacher. I knew it was my calling in life, and never once considered another career. After 30 years of teaching, I still have that same passion for teaching I had in that cold concrete basement.”
Although Frantz teaches science, she disliked the subject as a student. She struggled with the reading and found the questions at the end of the textbook chapters to be very difficult and challenging. Her dislike of science changed during her final year of student teaching when she was paired with a fifth grade teacher who made science lessons fun and engaging.
“I saw for the first time science as so much more than reading a textbook. I realized by engaging students’ hands and minds in a way that made them think, science could be meaningful, fun, and memorable,” she said.
From that point, Frantz made it her mission to instill that same new-found love of science in her own students. Not only does she share her enthusiasm for the subject, but she also looks for avenues that will make instruction engaging. That often means being creative with teaching methods and she uses technology as an integral component of lessons, allowing students to research, create, and collaborate with their peers.
Frantz has other tools in her teacher’s belt, too. She encourages learning and growth among her students and uses a good sense of humor to build a comfortable learning environment.
“It has been said that a good laugh is like a mini-vacation,” she said. “I want to create a positive, happy climate in my classroom so that students can learn, grow, and feel confident to take responsibility for their own learning. When my students embark on their next adventure, I want them to leave with an attitude of inquiry, a skill important to be a good scientist or mathematician, good student, and good citizen.”
Frantz has been a teacher for over 30 years and worked in Fayette County for 20. She taught third and fourth grade math and science at North Fayette Elementary for four years before joining the staff at Peeples Elementary.
In the next step, the finalists will be observed in their classrooms and interviewed by the judging panel of two retired educators and last year’s Fayette winner, Alexandra Vlachakis of Sandy Creek. The teacher with the highest combined judges’ score will be named Fayette County Teacher of the Year.
The winner will be announced a public celebration on April 23.
In the photo, recently-elected school board member and retired teacher Diane Basham (right), presents a flower bouquet to her colleague and friend and finalist, Lynne Bruschetti, a language arts and world literature teacher at McIntosh.
