DATE: Friday, April 4, 1997                 TAG: 9704020181

SECTION: CHESAPEAKE CLIPPER      PAGE: 07   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: COVER STORY 

SOURCE: BY NANCY YOUNG, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:   66 lines

2 MORE CITY TEACHERS HONORED LINDSAY CRUMP PORZIO, FOURTH-GRADE TEACHER AT G.A. TREAKLE, IS ELEMENTARY TEACHER OF THE YEAR; RITA LOPANE, SIXTH-GRADE TEACHER AT OSCAR SMITH MIDDLE, IS SECONDARY TEACHER OF THE YEAR.

While Linda Dobbins Laumann won the overall award, two other teachers were honored with district-wide awards: Lindsay Crump Porzio as named Elementary Teacher of the Year and Rita Lopane the Secondary Teacher of the Year.

Porzio, a fourth-grade teacher at G.A. Treakle Elementary School, said that when she was a youth she wanted to be a social worker - perhaps inspired by the example of the principal at the high school she went to in Richmond, Sister Charlotte Lange.

``She was very dedicated. She made us go out into the community and volunteer,'' Porzio said.

But the jump from a desire to do social work to teaching was an easy one for Porzio to make.

``Teaching is definitely social work,''she said.

One of the things Porzio was cited for was her ability to include deaf children into the mainstream of her classroom - to all of the children's benefit.

``Last year I put five totally deaf children in her class,'' said Porzio's principal, Diane Martin. ``Those children had never been in a regular classroom. . . . They made two years of progress in six months.''

``Last year was a challenge. It didn't seem like it was possible, but it was,'' said Porzio, who worked in conjunction with Julia Harper, a teacher of the hearing impaired. She also had the help of her students who picked up sign language.

``They knew it better than I did,'' Porzio said.

This year Porzio continues to teach hearing-impaired students. She said the experience has helped her teach all of her students.

``I have a lot of students who aren't auditory learners. It's the same as being deaf in terms of teaching,'' said Porzio, who added that with those students she stresses ``learning by doing.''

``She's an excellent teacher and I don't use that term loosely. It's like she's enjoying it more than the kids,'' said Martin. ``I've never seen her do even an average lesson.''

Lopane always wanted to be a teacher, even as a little girl growing up in Ohio.

``I felt like it was meant to be,'' said Lopane, who teaches sixth grade at Oscar Smith Middle School.

Lopane said she didn't want to be just any teacher. She had a role model to emulate, her own favorite teacher: Sadie Mathias.

``Bless her heart, I'm sure she's in that great classroom in the sky. She'd bring in her homebaked banana nut bread. Isn't that something? She was kind of a grandmother type,'' said Lopane. ``I thought, `Wow, I want to be like that.' But I don't make banana nut bread.''

Instead, Lopane uses humor and warmth to flavor her reading and writing lessons, something she finds many of her students dearly need.

``The home and school really has to be a team effort. I try to look at the whole child and how he comes into the classroom. Those that come in and they don't have breakfast or a warm place to stay, it affects the learning process,'' said Lopane.

``Teaching parallels a Hollywood screenplay,'' Lopane wrote about her teaching philosophy. ``I begin as an actress on the classroom set. Just like the movies I sometimes `bomb' and sometimes I am a box-office hit - a combination of Sense and Sensibility, Lean on Me, and The Nutty Professor. I have succeeded when I become the backstage director and my students become the real stars.''

Send Suggestions or Comments to webmaster@scholar.lib.vt.edu