THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, March 29, 1996 TAG: 9603280137
SECTION: CHESAPEAKE CLIPPER PAGE: 12 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover Story
SOURCE: BY ELIZABETH THIEL, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 144 lines
KAY S. STONE is fond of saying that her teaching career began in the land of make-believe.
As a little girl, she'd line up her dolls and stuffed animals and instruct them, using her mother's vanity stool for a teacher's desk and a piece of paper taped to the wall for a blackboard.
``They say that teachers are born, not made,'' said Stone, 50, a seventh-grade English teacher at Great Bridge Middle School North. ``I think there might be a little truth to that.''
Last week Stone got affirmation that her career isn't just child's play, when she was named Chesapeake's 1996 teacher of the year. It's among the highest honors a teacher can earn, because the annual city-wide winners are selected by educators from among a pool of highly gifted, award-winning teachers from each Chesapeake school.
Stone, who holds bachelor's and master's degrees in teaching, will go on to compete in the state teacher of the year contest.
``It's wonderful,'' said Stone, still in awe that after 22 years of teaching she's finally reached such a pinnacle. ``There are so many wonderful teachers in education. That's why it means so much to me.''
Colleagues and students say she's the kind of teacher parents hope their child is lucky enough to get. She is remembered by grateful former students. And she has awakened the urge to teach in untold numbers of children.
``She was the reason I became a teacher,'' said Kimberly A. Hill, a former Stone student who now teaches sixth-grade math, science and social studies at Great Bridge Middle North.
Hill made her career choice one day in first grade. Stone, who then taught elementary school, reinforced some lesson by skipping around Hill's classroom, singing: ``On the Good Ship Lollipop.''
``Little things like that meant a lot,'' said Hill, a first-year teacher whose career ambition now is to make such a lasting impression on her own students.
Great Bridge Middle North Principal Richard W. West said it's no surprise to him that Stone, the school's English Department chairwoman, got the top honor.
A former teacher at Great Bridge Junior High, which served seventh- through ninth-graders and was set up much like high schools, Stone has helped lead the district in its transition to middle schools. Middle schools serve sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders and are designed to give kids a more gentle transition from elementary school to high school.
Her expertise prompted West to ask her to lead a team of seventh-grade teachers who were new to Chesapeake and to Great Bridge Middle North last school year.
``She has just innumerable qualities,'' West said. ``She's one of those teachers you just don't see very often. Probably in my 23 years, she's the best that I've ever worked with.''
She has a rare kind of respect for adolescents. She sees them as intelligent, budding citizens, not just vessels of raging hormones.
``Everything she does, how she addresses them, the tone of her voice, her activities - she sends kids the message that they really are important to her,'' West said.
``She's able to communicate with kids of all abilities, because she shows the same respect for the lowest-achieving child as she does for the highest-achieving child.''
The kids immediately recognize her concern, and they admire her for it - almost as much as they admire her for her pair of hip, black patent leather Mary Jane-style shoes with wedge heels. She wears them often to keep her feet comfy as she trudges back and forth between the school building and her classroom, located in one of a sea of portables on the school's grounds.
``She's, like, my favorite teacher,'' said Erika D. Cole, 12. ``She sometimes acts like a mature kid, but still professional.''
``She's a good teacher,'' said Brandon A. Burr, 13, a seventh-grader and member of the school's forensics team, which Stone coaches. Burr is a bright student, although he admits that he often talks and is inattentive in his classes. That's because he gets bored, he said.
In Stone's English course, his favorite of the day, he doesn't have time for that.
``When I'm talking, she'll call on me and I'll stop, because I get engrossed in what she's saying,'' he said. ``She compliments you so much you don't want to act up.
``She may be an English teacher, but she's more than that. She's like a second mom.''
Stone shares details about her life - her husband, Don, 52, and her two boys, Trey, 30, and Brett, 25 - with her classes. During a recent lesson on poetry, for example, she penned a comic verse about her aversion to cooking and her husband's woe at having to go hungry. She relates stories about her experiences coaching tennis at Great Bridge High School.
Her class-time activities are fast-paced and varied, from reading poetry aloud to diagramming funny sentences on the board or memorizing famous verses. All students are asked to participate.
She emphasizes basic grammar, spelling, vocabulary and proper word usage, memorization and writing. She sprinkles in a few values lessons, such as teaching kids to watch what they say so they don't hurt each other's feelings.
Her overall goal is to try to get kids to be better writers and thinkers in the year they are with her.
One way she does that is by intellectual osmosis: She loves English herself.
But she also helps kids learn by making them feel good about their thoughts and ideas.
Every day, she picks students who did something good the day before. She asks them to write about their deeds in a green ring binder entitled ``The Good Book.'' The book is now thick with entries dating back to September, when school began.
``Those are priceless to me,'' she said. ``One day, when I'm a little old lady, I'll be sitting somewhere reading them, and it'll bring everything back.''
Her walls are filled with students' writing and posters highlighting kids' achievements, such as a bulletin board that lists the top 10 students in each class for each report card period.
Her blackboards are alive with thoughtful quotes and word riddles that the students develop.
``I've worked very hard over the years to try to make kids love English,'' she said. ``And if they're not going to love English, at least to love my class.''
Her enthusiasm is contagious.
``She really likes to teach, and it makes it fun for us,'' said 12-year-old Nicole C. Storm.
``She's taught us things about English that I never knew,'' said Karl W. Lambert, 12.
The teacher of the year award is just a beginning for a teacher like Stone, who is most at home in front of a class full of pre-teens.
``I like the interaction with the kids,'' she said. ``They are just so creative, so intuitive.
``I learn from them. I like to also think that I might make a difference.'' ILLUSTRATION: Staff photos by MORT FRYMAN
When students asked Kay S. Stone how she became teacher of the year,
she joked that it was her unusual choice of footwear.
Kay Stone is caught up with emotion when discussing a story her
students are reading.
Kay Stone works with her student teacher, Elizabeth Krolikowski, at
Great Bridge Middle School North.
Kay Stone discusses a poem with a seventh grade English classes.
KEYWORDS: TEACHER OF THE YEAR by CNB