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Schools

Sunlake Staff Members Shine In Countywide Competition

Two staff members are in the final three for Teacher of the Year and School Resource Personnel of the Year.

Spending 30 years as a teacher has taught Lauren Pantoja a few things about education and literacy.

She uses that knowledge to inspire students to read at Sunlake High School through her job as a literacy coach. She works with teachers in varying subjects like math, science, history and of course English.

“My job is as a coach, but I don’t see it that way,” Pantoja said. “It is more of collaboration. When I collaborate with teachers, they bring the expertise of their subject matter together with my expertise of literacy. We talk about ways we can help the students to become better readers.”

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Her efforts have earned Pantoja a spot as one of three finalists for teacher of the year in Pasco County.

“It is very exciting,” Pantoja said. “It is quite an honor to be nominated.”

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Pantoja was selected to be the teacher of the year for her school by her peers at Sunlake. After winning the school’s vote, she had to earn the votes of a panel of teachers from the school district’s union - United School Employees of Pasco. On Jan. 29, Pantoja will discover if she won at the Pasco Education Foundation’s celebration at Wesley Chapel High School.

She said she interacts with many of the teachers on a regular basis due to her work, which is a reason why she feels she was nominated.

“It is one of the advantages of being a coach, I interact with a lot of teachers,” Pantoja said. “I work with teachers in all the departments so I am pretty sure that had a big influence.”

Pantoja has worked with teachers to help provide several programs at the school to help the students become better readers.

“We have a default to reading program to encourage kids to read,” Pantoja said. “If students are caught reading, then they are rewarded with something like an iTunes or Barnes & Noble gift card. I also do read-alouds and I go into the classrooms and ask the students what they are reading.”

There are other programs as well to help students with taking tests and other issues.

“We offer a test-taking boot camps,” Pantoja said. “We are helping the students with ACT preparation, SAT preparation and FCAT preparation. We are helping those students who have had problems taking tests in the past. We look at their strengths and weaknesses.”

Pantoja also helps students through the student success team at the school along with her other team members Matt Penn, Melodie Oleson, Jan Lee Stern and Jackie Johnson.

“It is our goal to get students reading more in content areas,” Pantoja said. “We want to increase the level of cognitive complexity. We want the students to become higher level thinkers.”

Pantoja said she is a literacy coach, because she believes reading and comprehension are critical for success.

“The more you read and write, the more prolific you become,” Pantoja said. “You have to exercise your brain. If you were a basketball player, you would have to keep practicing to get better and reading is the same way. Students need to exercise their brains. I always say that they are not going to get any smarter just by sitting there.”

Reading is very important, but not just reading anything. Pantoja said she prefers for her students to read novels.

“I think it is good for them to read newspapers so they can stay on top of the current topics, but in order to expand their minds they need novels,” Pantoja said. “They need novels to stretch the mind, just because of the vocabulary. After third grade, almost all of a person’s vocabulary comes from reading.”

Even though Pantoja already has a master’s degree in education and teaching from Webster University, she continues to take classes. She has already earned 18 hours beyond her master’s degree.

“I keep taking classes to keep myself current,” Pantoja said. “I take educational classes related to what I do like assessment classes and content area comprehension. I have to stay current because the students are always changing. Experience and education are both important for teachers. You can be a good teacher naturally, but you can only get better through experience and education.”

In the future, Pantoja said she would like to see the way children are taught change.

“I have an opinion about education,” Pantoja said. “It frustrates me when people talk about the trouble with education today. In my opinion, it is constantly changing. We put the blame on teachers and parents, or we say it is the system. I think we need more schools like Marchman. We need to look at the changing needs of the students. I don’t think we have enough tech schools. We need to try to accommodate the different directions students want to go in.”

Even though she said she likes the tech schools, Sunlake High School is exactly where Pantoja wants to be.

“I love it here,” Pantoja said. “I love the students and I love the teachers. I love that I can stay in the field of education, but my job can be so different.”

Sunlake also boasts another finalist in the countywide competition.  Judy Scavino is a secretary at the school and was named one of the final three candidates for School Resource Personnel of the Year.

“I am very honored that my peers would think of me,” Scavino said. “I was honored, because it is my peers who voted for me. Each of my coworkers are all outstanding individuals in what they do. When we had to nominate each other, it was very difficult to select just one coworker.  I am very fortunate to work with such a wonderful group of caring, professional people.”

Scavino said she thinks it was her attitude that got her to the final three.

“It is all about service with a smile,” Scavino said. “I know they want someone who works hard and makes sure the school runs smoothly.”

The other candidates for teacher of the year are Dan Wolfe at Schrader Elementary School and Chris Gorman at Wesley Chapel Elementary School. The other SRP candidates are Mark Miller, an instructional assistant at Schwettman Education Center, and Pam Paone, an instructional assistant at Hudson High School.

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