Care, Effort Lends Touch of Class to 3 Best Teachers

Three teachers who say they go the extra mile to care for their students were named the outstanding San Diego County teachers for 1991-92 Tuesday night.

Robert Clare Johnson of Escondido High School, Patti D. Pettigrew of Grant Middle School, also in Escondido, and Judith Yukiko Parker of Cook Elementary in Chula Vista won top honors out of 10 semi-finalists in the 18th annual teachers awards.

They were featured before 1,500 people at Copley Symphony Hall in a pomp-and-circumstance ceremony--the first of its kind statewide, televised live by the county’s four major cable companies in an effort to raise the recognition of teachers to the level usually given to athletes and their achievements.

The winners were chosen by a citizens’ committee under the auspices of the San Diego County Office of Education, which organizes the local annual awards.

Johnson, in his 29th year of teaching drama and art--and his 25th at Escondido--said that all teachers “must go the extra step, even if it means driving 600 miles to dig sandstone out of a hillside for art classes, camping (at school) an entire week to guard expensive stage lighting, or writing an original musical so that students may have the opportunity to write the words and music.”

Johnson’s enthusiasm for his craft and his students was sorely tested in March, 1989, when vandals torched the school’s theater stage, causing $750,000 in damage. Yet Johnson at the time vowed not “to be driven off my own campus. If need be, we’ll rent a tent, a circus tent.”

The original musical, “Thanks a Million,” did indeed go on, with the school using a couple of flatbed trucks for a stage and improvised lighting and sound.

Escondido High Principal Ken James called Johnson, who applied for the honor at the urging of his colleagues, “one of the finest teachers I have ever observed.”

Pettigrew was particularly pleased to share honor with Johnson, who was her teacher in Escondido 23 years ago.

Entering her seventh year as a middle-school English teacher, Pettigrew said she wants to serve as a counterbalance to the gang violence, money woes and other plagues on public education. Many teachers and students serve as examples that “education is alive and well,” she said, but added that the public must help keep it that way.

“Teaching literature and English allows me to touch every subject area, offering students a sweeping view of the world of knowledge and human understanding,” she said. “The greatest satisfaction for a teacher is to see the boy who refused to read not be able to put a book down. . . . The sweetest words were from a student this year: ‘Mrs. Pettigrew, I have never been so loved before.’ ”

Chula Vista’s Parker, who, like Johnson, is entering her 29th year of teaching, credited her upbringing in Hawaii, the nation’s most ethnically diverse state, for her compassion and caring for all students.

“Care, really care!” Parker encouraged fellow teachers. “Students aren’t blind. They can see and feel whether we are genuinely interested in them . . . not only in the academics, but in their total being.”

Parker also has taught in Kentucky and Florida.

“I have taught every grade, have been a language arts and reading specialist, gifted teacher, mentor, and master teacher for student teachers,” she said. “My greatest contribution to education has been my total dedication . . . and the accomplishment from it has been many, many successful children who are now adults.”

The three teachers will now qualify for California Teacher of the Year honors later this year. Janis T. Gabay of Serra High School in San Diego won both California and national teacher of the year awards for 1989-90. She was one of the presenters Tuesday night.