Five Southland Educators Win $25,000 Awards

Five Southern Californians were among the 12 recipients of this year’s California Educator Awards, announced Thursday by state Supt. of Public Instruction Bill Honig.

Janis Gabay, the San Diego Unified School District English teacher chosen earlier as both National Teacher of the Year and California Teacher of the Year, was one recipient of the awards, which carry prizes of $25,000 each. Gabay is on the faculty of Serra Senior High School, where she is a mentor teacher, and is a regional director of the California Literature Project.

Other area recipients are:

Herb Holland, theater arts teacher at the Los Angeles Unified School District’s Audubon Junior High in the Crenshaw District. Recently selected to be a teacher and researcher for the National Arts Education Research Center at New York University, Holland is active with the California Arts Project.

Norma Mota-Altman, a sixth grade teacher at Emery Park School in the Alhambra City Elementary School District. She was cited for her innovation and creativity and for her work leading “The Thinkers’ Club,” a before-school group established for troubled students in grades four through six.

Tim Harvey, a principal in the Brea-Olinda Unified School District in Orange County. Harvey leads the staff at William E. Fanning Elementary School, which won a California Distinguished School Award in 1989. State education officials said his school’s integrated language arts curriculum has become a model for the rest of the district.

Wayne Piercy, principal of Polytechnic High School in the Long Beach Unified School District. Under Piercy’s five-year tenure, Polytechnic won the state’s Distinguished School Award in 1986 and its Sustained Achievement Award earlier this year; he recently was appointed the director of legislative services for the Long Beach district.

The California Educator awards, given annually since 1987, are funded by the Milken Family Foundation of Los Angeles.