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Making a career out of 'be all you can be'
A Shepherd University education professor advised Janice Pittleman years ago to look elsewhere for a career.
"She thought I'd never be a good teacher, and told me so," Pittleman said last week.
She ignored that advice, much to the delight of her students at Blue Ridge Middle School, and today she is the 2008 Shenandoah University Teacher of the Year.
Accolades from those sixth-graders are in the nominating packet that brought the award, given yearly to a Loudoun County Public Schools teacher in one of the lesser-known specialties – music, art, English as a second language, physical education or counseling.
Pittleman graduated from Shepherd in 1981, ready to teach kindergarten. Fate intervened, in the guise of a last-minute opening for a special education teacher at Rosemont Elementary School in Martinsburg, W.Va. She's been in a special education classroom ever since, and in a Loudoun classroom since 1991. She's been at Blue Ridge in Purcellville since 1996.
She focuses, she said, on "making connections with the child, with the parents. I will make you realize that I am about your kids and what's best for your child, and I will try to work with you."
And she knows her goals. "If you teach them nothing else, teach them the value of good manners, a firm handshake, to be honest and to do our best in whatever you chose to do. Being a good person and being able to give back, in whatever realm, means 100 times more to me than being a chemical engineer."
Many of her students keep in touch. She remembers a student at James Wood High School in Winchester – a student with such profound spacial orientation difficulties, "I never thought she would drive a car, much less be able to go to college."
That student is a college graduate and a teacher today. She told Pittleman it was her ninth-grade math class that made it possible.
Working with children and their parents, seeing them succeed, is still her passion. But more and more, the paperwork is overwhelming. All the testing looks good as a statistic, she said. She's not so sure it's what is best for her students.
She worries about the "privilege gap" between the wealthy and well-cared-for, and those who come to school unfed, unwashed and unhoused. If she switches to a second career, it will be advocating for the parents of children with disabilities -- "empowering children and families to reach their potential."
Contact the reporter at ssollinger@timespapers.com
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