                             THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT 
              Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: Friday, March 1, 1996                  TAG: 9602280157
SECTION: CHESAPEAKE CLIPPER       PAGE: 03   EDITION: FINAL 
SOURCE: BY ERIC FEBER, STAFF WRITER 
                                             LENGTH: Long  :  132 lines

TEACHER MAKES KIDS LIFELONG LEARNERS

Her principal calls her ``an administrator's dream.''

The Chesapeake Reading Council calls her ``Chesapeake Reading Teacher of the Year.''

Both say Carol L. Floyd can influence students so deeply that she turns out an amazing number of motivated and successful students who go on to bright careers and futures.

And she teachers kindergarten.

The Reading Council awarded Floyd, a teacher at Butts Road Primary School, its top honor at an awards banquet recently.

The council selected Floyd more than 11 other teachers from various Chesapeake primary, intermediate, middle and elementary schools throughout the city.

Floyd earned her bachelor of science in elementary education in 1980 and her master of science in 1985 from Old Dominion University. She earned an education specialist designation from George Washington University in 1993.

She has taught kindergarten through third grades as well as pre-kindergarten summer classes, concentrating on math and reading.

She's a member of Delta Kappa Gamma education sorority, Phi Delta Kappa education fraternity and the Butts Road PTA. She's treasurer of the Great Bridge Woman's Club and a member of the Women's Division of the Chesapeake Council of the Hampton Roads Chamber of Commerce.

She was selected ``Teacher of the Year'' at B.M. Williams Primary and Butts Road Primary schools in 1985 and 1992.

Elizabeth S. ``Liz'' Stublen, the principal at Butts Road Primary School, who nominated Floyd, thinks the council couldn't have made a better choice.

``She has more former students come back to visit her than any other teacher I know,'' Stublen said. ``She's very child-oriented, child-centered. She knows how to get children to work. She knows her job and what teaching is all about. She makes her children lifelong learners, and she instills a love of reading in her students.''

Stublen said Floyd ``maintains a state-of-the-art classroom'' and also keeps up with the latest research and innovations in teaching.

``She spends much of her own time working with and teaching colleagues as well as parents to provide the best education possible for their children,'' Stublen explained.

In an age in which videos, cable television and electronic games vie for the attention of young minds, Floyd taps into the keen enthusiasm of her young students.

``Children are so eager,'' she said. ``They want to read. I want to keep that enthusiasm strong.''

Floyd said she keeps that interest high by using what she and her colleagues call an integrated curriculum. In fact, Floyd's programs are so successful that she has developed and piloted instructional programs that are used throughout the Chesapeake school system.

``It is her ability to mesh art and the science of teaching that make her a model of what is best in our profession,'' wrote G. Larry Short, director of elementary curriculum and instruction for Chesapeake Public Schools, in a nominating letter to the Reading Council. ``I have been most impressed with her ability to integrate reading instruction into every facet of her instruction. Whatever the subject, including mathematics, she finds a way to make it a reading experience for her children.''

Short cited Floyd's work outside of the classroom. He said she gained quite a bit of expertise through her own teaching experiences and personal research, including serving on a volunteer kindergarten committee for past several years and as a consultant for other teachers.

Floyd developed the kindergarten literature curriculum that is now used across the city.

How does it work?

For example, Floyd said, she reads the book ``Pumpkin, Pumpkin'' around Thanksgiving time to her students.

To integrate several other fields into the process, she has her class count out pumpkin seeds, offering math; she has them plant the seeds and monitor the growth of the vines, incorporating science and the experimental method; she has her children note the different colors of the seeds, the vine and the eventual growth, working in color recognition; and finally, she finds ways to incorporate what they learned in their own everyday lives, by possibly cooking up a pumpkin pie in the classroom or having her students write their own recipes, which she publishes in a book.

``These exercises give them good critical thinking skills,'' she said. ``It pulls all the strands together. It applies literature and what they read to their everyday lives. I like to incorporate problem solving and application of what they learned. It relates what they learned to their own world and it makes the learning more meaningful.''

Floyd likes her young charges to keep a journal of what they study.

``I give them their first experience in journal writing,'' she said. ``They write out their words and sentences phonetically. At this stage, there's no right or wrong way to do it. I want to give them the opportunity and desire to learn the right way to write their thoughts on paper.''

Floyd said when children begin to write their own journals, even at this unskilled age, they make connections from speaking to writing to reading.

Eventually, they can't wait to learn how to do it the correct way, she said. They can't wait to read.

``They understand that there's the correct dictionary way to spell a word,'' she said. ``They eventually start to look for those words. You see these children become independent thinkers in every way. They start to make all the connections.''

To further the social and interactive development in her students, Floyd likes to pair up her students with varying degrees of social and verbal skills at play and learning centers throughout her classroom. When she spots a child who prefers to play alone she tries to pair her or him up with a student with similar preferences.

Floyd said the award from the reading council was a wonderful recognition from her peers, but the real reward is seeing her children develop.

``When these kids connect, it's like breaking a code,'' she said. ``One can see reading, writing and thinking start to grow. It just begins to blossom in each child. When you see their little faces light up like bulbs. When all the things you have done since day one come together. When you build that total child on academic, social, physical and cognitive levels, it's just awesome.'' ILLUSTRATION: Staff photo by MORT FRYMAN

``Reading Teacher of the Year'' Carol L. Floyd has developed

programs that are used throughout the Chesapeake school system.