Tuesday, September 01, 2009
Metro columnist Dan Casey: Top teacher proves what a mentor can do
JARED SOARES The Roanoke Times
Stephanie Doyle, Virginia's 2009 Teacher of the Year, applauds during the annual Roanoke City Schools convocation, which was held at the Roanoke Civic Center on Monday morning.
Dan Casey is The Roanoke Times' metro columnist.
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At the Roanoke City Schools convocation and pep rally Monday, middle school history teacher Stephanie Doyle stood in front of thousands of teachers and staff and told the story of a young student who was lost.
By the time she entered fifth grade, the young girl lived in a family marred by parental alcohol abuse and all of its psyche-eroding implications.
By seventh grade, she had lost all interest in learning. She sank into a deep depression. She wanted to quit school. More than once, the girl contemplated suicide.
That student, we learned near the end of the speech, was Doyle, who is now 32 and is a married mom. In October she was named Virginia's 2009 Teacher of the Year.
Doyle told her own story as a way to sound a clarion call for teachers never to forget the important role they play as mentors.
In Doyle's case, the mentor was a woman named Karen Sykes, who now lives in Severna Park, Md.
Sykes was in her early 20s, recently out of college, and married to a music teacher in Bedford when she volunteered with Big Brothers Big Sisters of Roanoke and was assigned to Doyle.
By Doyle's account, Sykes was much more than a shoulder for Doyle to cry on. She spent many evenings helping Doyle with homework. She exposed her to a world beyond her turmoil-filled home.
But Sykes was no sponge overflowing with sympathy. Above all else, Doyle remembers her mentor's favorite advice: "Shut up and deal."
"She would tell me how I could not change my circumstances, that these were things that were beyond my control," Doyle recalled after the convocation. She had to move past those, Sykes counseled, to the aspects of her life the young student could control. One of them was her schoolwork.
It was a kind of tough love. But slowly and surely Doyle made a turnaround. By the time she graduated from Lord Botetourt High School, she was taking advanced courses. She went on to college, earned a degree -- and we know where she is today.
"Because of the inspiration of one person, I learned that nothing is impossible," she told the convocation.
Doyle and I spoke after the ceremony. She told me she realized, almost as soon as she became a teacher at James Breckinridge Middle School, that her job put her in one of the best possible positions to be a mentor.
"I see the role of teacher as more than just teacher. Many times we're a counselor, sometimes a physician, at other times a cheerleader or coach or a mom and a dad. We wear many hats, all for the sake of those children."
Doyle is also living that, through a program she started at Breckinridge Middle School called Girls Rising Onto Womanhood. Beyond academic support, it helps girls make the right choices as they navigate what is often a turbulent adolescence.
Doyle had the limelight Monday, but she's far from unique. I understand the influence schoolteachers have on students' education and lives from my own four children -- all students or graduates of Roanoke schools.
The system still faces many challenges. Last year, budget reductions forced it to close some schools, reduce its work force, change the school attendance boundaries and outsource its bus system. William Fleming High School's principal is fighting to keep her job after allegations that she rigged a testing system to artificially inflate scores.
Despite that, there was lots to be inspired about at Monday's convocation. For the first time in the school system's history, only one of its schools is not fully accredited. The high school graduation rate is climbing. Last year, 114 students graduated from Forest Park Academy. In years past, many would have dropped out and been forgotten.
But knowing there are teachers like Doyle in the system is the most inspiring thing of all.
