President Honors San Diego Teacher

President Bush presented a crystal apple and a note of thanks to Janis T. Gabay of San Diego’s Serra High School in a ceremony Wednesday at which she was named the 1990 National Teacher of the Year.

“Over the past 17 years, she has developed her power to motivate minds, to give kids a sense of wonder and bless them with a life of possibilities unimagined in ordinary moments,” Bush said of Gabay.

The 39-year-old Gabay, standing on a box to see over Bush’s lectern, fought back tears as she accepted the award, along with a handshake from the President and a kiss from Barbara Bush. She thanked officials for providing “a credible and assertive voice to this nation’s concerns about education.”

The Administration originally had planned a Rose Garden ceremony for Gabay but bad weather forced the festivities to an auditorium in the Old Executive Office Building, next to the White House. Gabay and Secretary of Education Lauro Cavazos sat on stage, in front of an audience of members of the local congressional delegation, education officials and 10 of Gabay’s relatives.

During the ceremony, Bush said Gabay “understands that a real education goes far beyond acquiring skills. It instills a lifelong love of learning.”

Gabay, a teacher in the San Diego Unified School District for 17 years, came to the city from her native Hawaii as a child. She attended San Diego city schools, receiving her high school diploma from Madison High, then earned a bachelor’s degree at San Diego State University. She now teaches 12th-grade advanced-placement and 10th-grade regular English classes at Serra.

In one of the required essays in the competition for the national award, 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 also criticized over-reliance on standardized tests to assess students and the performance of teachers.

“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,” she wrote.

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

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