Valley teacher receives award

MAT-SU -- Swanson Elementary School teacher Rita Davis was recently chosen as the 2005 Alternate Teacher of the Year for Alaska by the Alaska Department of Education.

After 32 years of teaching special education, Rita Davis has received an impressive share of awards this year, including the 2004-05 Mat-Su Teacher of the Year and a top-five finalist selection for Alaska Teacher of the Year.

Ronnie Stanford, a 20-year teaching veteran from Barrow High School, received the top honors, however, for the statewide competition. Stanford teaches instrumental music at Barrow, a school that has won numerous state and national awards for music over the past nine years.

Davis has taught special education all over the Valley, from kindergarten through 12th grade, but her influence in Alaskan education reaches much further than the classroom.

She served on a statewide committee to help develop teacher standards for Alaska, to provide teacher accountability -- something Davis believes teachers owe the public.

Apart from teaching special education, Davis also mentors and regularly assists her colleagues, developing instructional skills and working with teachers who need help.

Davis also offers a career class to high-school students who are interested in working in education. Davis will teach the education career class during the second semester of the current school year. The class is free to Mat-Su Borough School District students and will be offered on Thursdays from 4:30-6:30 p.m. at Colony High School.

Davis plans to stay active in other aspects of education as well.

"I feel quite gratified by all this," Davis wrote in an e-mail Thursday, "and I will use this recognition and validation to further my involvement on the local, state and national levels. In this way, I hope to inform decision makers on public education issues."

Contact Joel Davidson at joel.davidson@frontiersman.com.