Four MCPS teachers receive Greenblatt award
Four Montgomery County teachers were announced as winners of awards from the Marian Greenblatt Education Fund on Thursday.
Three were given Master Teacher awards from the group and one received a Rising Star award.
Master Teacher Award Winners were:
- Rodney Van Tassell, a social studies teacher at Winston Churchill High School in Potomac. He was praised for increasing students’ participation in Advanced Placement U.S. history courses and increasing assessment scores through unique and fun lessons.
- Inge Chichester, a World Studies content specialist at Sligo Middle School in Silver Spring. Chichester “holds students and her fellow teachers to the highest of expectations,” the Greenblatt Education Fund wrote in a news release. She helped raise English literacy scores and reduce the number of students with low grades.
- Annie Moore, a kindergarten teacher at Farmland Elementary School. Moore “has taken students from the 39th percentile for kindergarten benchmarks to the 70th percentile,” the news release says. This year, all 25 of her students met the grade-level standard for letter recognition and phonics.
One of the Master Teacher award winners will be named the Montgomery County Teacher of the Year. That teacher will be eligible for a national teacher of the year honor.
The Rising Star award winner was Susan Joanna Martinez-Mack, a science teacher at Julius West Middle School. She was praised for advocating for new technology and involvement in sponsoring student academic groups.
Master Teacher award recipients receive $2,000 and Rising Star awardees receive $1,000.
School board to meet Monday
The Montgomery County Board of Education will meet on Monday evening to discuss the school district’s Equity and Achievement Framework.
The Equity and Achievement Framework tracks students’ academic success and disaggregates, or breaks apart, the data by demographics and socioeconomic status.
The meeting will begin at 5 p.m. at MCPS central offices in Rockville.
Also on the agenda is discussion of education bills in the Maryland legislature.
Anti-vaping event scheduled for March
MCPS, in collaboration with the county’s Department of Health and Human Services, will hold an “anti-vaping symposium” on March 28 to prevent youth vaping.
The event will be held from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Montgomery County campus of Johns Hopkins University.
The symposium is part of a broader vaping prevention campaign that aims to develop a new curriculum for students and families about the dangers and warning signs of vaping and substance abuse.
