Serra’s Gabay Selected State Teacher of Year

English teacher Janis T. Gabay of Serra High School was named the California 1990 Teacher of the Year by state schools Supt. Bill Honig. Gabay had been one of three San Diego County teachers of the year selected earlier this fall.

Gabay, a 17-year veteran in the San Diego Unified School District, will receive $15,000 and become the state’s nominee for national teacher of the year. Gabay received her award Thursday in Los Angeles, gaining the top honors after several months of screenings, essay writing and classroom visits from a committee headed by Honig.

“Janis embodies all the best qualities we’ve been working toward with educational reform over the past six years,” Honig said Thursday. “She begins from the important premise that all students can achieve and will succeed. She sets high standards, follows a rigorous curriculum, employs a variety of teaching techniques, relates academics to the ‘real world,’ and pushes her students to excel.”

Gabay teaches advanced placement English to seniors and sophomore English at Serra High, a heterogeneous school with students both from longtime Tierrasanta families and the sprawling Murphy Canyon housing complex for enlisted Navy personnel. For five years, she has also had the title “mentor teacher,” an honor given by other teachers under which a mentor conducts seminars and workshops for colleagues.

Gabay, 39, was born in Maui, Hawaii, but came to San Diego as a child and attended San Diego city schools, receiving a diploma from Madison High School. At San Diego State University, she earned a bachelor’s degree, a secondary teaching credential, a specialist teaching credential in gifted education, and a community college instructor credential.

In one of the required essays during the competition, Gabay wrote: “A basic tenet of my philosophy of teaching is that I am teaching to the whole child, not simply to that part of him or her that needs language arts skills.”

Gabay is the first San Diego County teacher to win the state honor since Patricia Oyeshiku of Morse High School received it in 1981.