San Diego’s Janis Gabay Is U.S. Teacher of the Year

Janis T. Gabay of Serra High School will be named the 1990 National Teacher of the Year today by President George Bush at a White House ceremony. The top honor completes a year of awards for Gabay, who earlier had been named the California 1990 Teacher of the Year and one of three San Diego County teachers of the year.

“In many ways, I am a prototypical teacher,” Gabay, a 17-year veteran of the San Diego Unified School District, said Tuesday.

“I think I have the requisite enthusiasm, commitment, academic preparation and interpersonal skills to offer students of diverse backgrounds a real high standard of education. I represent all those teachers who are striving in the same way. I work hard to be a good teacher.”

The 39-year-old Hawaii native came to San Diego as a child and attended San Diego city schools, receiving her high school diploma from Madison High. She then attended San Diego State University, where she earned a bachelor’s degree as well as a secondary teaching credential, a specialist teaching credential in gifted education and a community college instructor credential.

After completing this school year, Gabay will be released from the classroom for a year to act as a spokeswoman for education, she said. As teacher of the year, her task will be to propose ways education may be improved.

“My feeling is we must acknowledge the problems of education, but also replicate the solutions we’re finding to those problems in classrooms throughout the nation,” Gabay said.

State Supt. of Public Instruction Bill Honig, in prepared remarks, called Gabay “the prototype of the teachers we need for the 1990s. She embodies all the best qualities we’ve been working toward with educational reform. . . . She begins from the important premise that all students can achieve and will succeed.”

Honig added, “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.”

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 teaches 12th-grade advanced placement and 10th-grade regular English classes at Serra. Regarding her teaching, Gabay said: “Perhaps my greatest contribution to education is being able to motivate students to demonstrate a level of performance that matches all their potential within. I see my primary task as bringing out abilities and talents that students may not even know they have.

“To accept single competence defeats the purpose of education: to understand one’s world by using one’s mind, and to understand one’s self by knowing one’s heart.”

Gabay believes that, although teacher accountability has increased with renewed attention on improving education, other than standardized tests should also be considered.

“I find that many types of assessment can help me check students’ growth: portfolios of student work, logs and journals, writing samples, videotapes, student-teacher conferences, long-term projects and my own direct observation of behavior.

“Such variety yields a more reliable picture of my students’ growth than their” test scores alone, she said.

One of her former students wrote in support of Gabay’s application for the honor: “Having a teacher with the passion and enthusiasm Ms. Gabay exhibits has been a rare pleasure. She expects her students to make a noble effort to complete the materials assigned, but she understands occurrences in students’ lives that affect their school performance. I experienced a dilemma during my first semester, and, rather than just complain that I was not completing my assignments, Ms. Gabay offered herself as a listener to share what I was experiencing.”

Candidates for teacher of the year at local district levels are nominated by their principals or can submit their own names for consideration. Those who make it to state and national levels are screened by committees, which make classroom visits and judge applicants on the basis of skills, community leadership and ability to motivate students.

Gabay is the second San Diego County teacher to receive the national honor. Myrra Lenora Lee of Grossmont Union High School won the national award in 1977.