Barbara DeBow May Find Herself ‘Teacher of the Year’ Today : Molding Minds With Skill, Joy

Maybe it’s her boundless enthusiasm, the sheer joy Barbara DeBow gets out of showing her junior high school class how a prehistoric iceman takes his first halting steps in an alien world.

Or maybe it’s her keen sensitivity, the instinct that tells her now is just the right time to turn a Latino student’s sweeping generalization about Asians into a mini-lesson about cultural diversity.

But most likely these were just some of the qualities that persuaded the California State Department of Education to choose DeBow as one of four finalists for its coveted Teacher of the Year award. Spend a little time with her and her students at Anaheim’s Ball Junior High School and some of the other qualities hit you over the head. There is her gentle sense of humor and purpose, her patience and her ability to give each of her students, themselves strangers in an alien world, the attention that makes them feel special.

“It is really important to retain their culture and their heritage,” DeBow says of her students, all of whom are seventh- and eighth-graders whose first language isn’t English. “That helps them feel good about themselves. And that helps them succeed in school.”

Right now, DeBow, who will be 41 next week, is feeling pretty good about herself. She is beginning her seventh year of teaching social studies and English as a Second Language at Ball and is excited that her efforts with what many consider to be the hardest-to-teach students are being recognized.

“Oh, I’m just dying,” she tells a caller offering congratulations over her nomination. In addition to her teaching duties, DeBow administers Ball’s Chapter I program, a federally funded project for what are called educationally disadvantaged students.

“This is so exciting,” she gushes. “It’s really a thrill.”

DeBow, who lives in Irvine, is the only Orange County teacher among the finalists for the state award, open to all public and state-approved private school teachers in grades kindergarten through 12.

The others are Lorna Mae Nagata, who teaches fourth grade at Fremont Elementary in the Alhambra City School District in Los Angeles County; Michael D. Jordan, who teaches automotives at Ramona High School in San Diego County’s Ramona Unified School District, and William S. Coate, a sixth-grade teacher at James Monroe Elementary School in the Madera Unified School District, Madera County. Each of the finalists will be awarded $5,000, minus taxes.

But even if DeBow is not the winning name announced today in Los Angeles--and the recipient of a donated $15,000 that will be given out for the first time--the judgment of her students and peers still stands. She’s a winner, and fortunately for those whose lives she touches, is regarded as somewhat of an iconoclast.

Her classroom desk is piled with papers, charts, learning aids and stuff . She hardly ever sits there. The wooden podium in front of the blackboard is equally loaded down. Another seemingly useless accessory.

Instead, DeBow strolls around the classroom, bending over a student here, placing a hand on a shoulder there, never missing a beat.

“What about the movie we saw Friday?” she asks her seventh-grade social studies class about “The Iceman,” a movie starring Timothy Hutton. “Did you like it?”

They didn’t like it, they loved it. “Because it was weird,” one Latino girl says.

“What was weird about it?” DeBow wonders.

Well, for one thing, the music . The students begin moaning, making weird sounds.

One boy from Mexico points to a nearby classmate and says the music sounded “ chino (Chinese), like her.”

DeBow looks around, surprised. “Is Hung from China?” she asks the class. “No, she’s from Vietnam. That’s very different.”

The thought absorbs the class, creating a lull in what was a cacophony of excited young voices. They understand. They too are different. They speak the languages of Mexico, Taiwan, India, Iran, Guatemala, El Salvador, the Philippines and Romania.

Most are struggling with English, the language of their new land. Those who speak Spanish often address DeBow in that language. A fluent Spanish-speaker, she responds in English.

Those who speak Vietnamese or Thai address DeBow less often. But she seems to be getting through to them, too.

Tim Hsia, 12, arrived in the United States from Taiwan with his two sisters and parents only three months ago. He speaks almost no English. But when he and Pedro, a Mexican boy, are chosen the winners of DeBow’s weekly classroom lottery, a just-for-fun drawing that rewards youngsters who haven’t had discipline problems the previous week, he jumps up to slap palms with his co-winner.

He is still grinning from ear-to-ear as he leafs through the prize box containing such goodies as magazines and certificates for free hamburgers.

“I like school,” Tim says after class. “Many people in classroom. The teacher is good. I feel happy.” His small face, about half of it covered with oversize glasses, lights up. His smile is so big it nearly closes his eyes.

The Citizen of the Week drawing is equally emotion-filled, with the competition to pick the winning ticket--”Teacher! Teacher! Me! Me!”--as exciting as the announcement of the winner.

It is fun such as this that keeps many students interested.

Antonio Flores, 14, arrived from Michoacan, Mexico, six months ago, knowing no English and with only two years of formal schooling. He doesn’t know if he will ever earn a graduation certificate, or even whether his family will return from Mexico after their visit in December. But he hopes so. He doesn’t want to miss DeBow’s class.

“I like to come to school,” he says. “I’m learning how to write and read and we have fun with the teacher. She’s funny, more or less. And she’s a good teacher. She helps us a lot.”

But DeBow, a single parent with two sons ages 11 and 13, says she is not immune to the frustrations inherent in trying to teach youngsters from diverse cultures with few resources at her disposal.

“Sometimes, it’s tough getting across,” she says. “So you slow down, try it another way. What is so exciting about these kids is that you can really tell when they understand. Literally the light goes on. Gong!”

Sitting in the faculty dining room, DeBow is going over her “lunch notes,” little scraps of paper that she tapes to her thermos of coffee to remind her what business she needs to attend to with other teachers she will run across who are also eating their lunch. She picks at a tuna salad and sips coffee from a big mug emblazoned “Teacher of the Year,” recently passed on to her from a colleague who received a similar honor on the district level.

DeBow says she will carry on the “passing of the cup tradition.” She talks about her students, her kids , all through lunch. She bubbles with enthusiasm.

“Is this normal?” asks fellow teacher Diane Donnelly, anticipating a visitor’s question. “This is obnoxiously normal.”

“That’s Barbara,” Donnelly adds. “That attitude is what’s positive. You can always count on her to look at the bright side. It’s a natural talent.”

Miles Brakke, Ball’s principal, says it was his suggestion to nominate DeBow for the Teacher of the Year award, one that was quickly joined by other members of his administrative staff.

“We all claim ownership of Barbara,” he says. “We are part of this. She is representing all of us.

“I have mixed feelings about selecting Teachers of the Year,” he adds. “It usually creates some feelings of resentment, jealousy. But not in the case of Barbara; everyone has been so elated. On each level, it has been a united front pulling for her.”

Back in the classroom, the buzzer announcing the end of the period has sounded. But DeBow is still busy, attending to students. They want to show her this, talk about that. She can hardly get a word in edgewise.

Want Success? Try This

What qualities help make a good teacher? Asked that question recently, Orange County teacher-of-the-year nominee Barbara DeBow quickly provided her list of six helpful attributes:

- “Enthusiasm. I think a teacher needs to have enthusiasm and interest in the subject and in the student, working to make the subject matter come alive.”

- “Love. A teacher needs to have love both for the subject matter and for the students.”

- “Understanding. It’s important for a teacher to know where a student’s coming from--his or her culture--what experiences they’ve had and what experiences they’re going to have.”

- “Honesty. You’ve got to be honest with students--honest about their own ability and honest about things that go on in a democracy. You don’t give a snow job or cover up for things that aren’t working right. You try to get students interested in how they can make things better.”

- “Patience. It’s important to let students move at his or her own pace. You don’t want to push a student too fast. Each student has his or her own ability, and a teacher must allow that student to work at that level.”

- “Expectations. Teachers should expect a lot of their students because generally students live up to their teachers’ expectations. If you set high standards and expectations, you’ll get it.”