Glendale’s Top Teacher Calls for Joint Effort

Sidnie Myrick uses anything she can get her hands on to teach her fifth- and sixth-grade students at Edison Elementary School in Glendale:

Roller skates, matches and toy trucks for physical-science lessons. Spanish poems for language-arts studies. A do-it-yourself multiplication manual written by fifth- and sixth-graders for second- and third-graders.

Her inventiveness paid off this week when the Glendale Unified School District picked Myrick as its nominee for the 1994 California Teachers of the Year contest.

“I was very surprised and extremely honored,” Myrick said. “I truly want to take this as an opportunity to solidify in a permanent way my thoughts on education.”

Classroom instruction, she said, should be designed to make students “think rather than memorize.” In her class, Myrick said, she emphasizes visual and hands-on work because they allow students to “make the connection between what they did and the concept that they’ve learned.”

A 30-year-old Sunland native who now lives in Pasadena, Myrick is a former president of the Glendale Teachers Assn. and a former high school teacher.

She attended Glendale Community College for a year before transferring to UCLA, where she graduated in 1984 with a bachelor’s degree in history. She received a teaching credential in 1987 from Cal State L.A.

Myrick said she made the switch from teaching high school to elementary school in 1988 because “I wanted to have a closer connection with the students.” She felt she could have a greater impact if she taught the same students all day rather than just for one class period, as teachers do in high schools.

Myrick urges that teachers be active not only in schools, but in the surrounding communities.

“Education does not only occur in the classroom,” she said. “It occurs in the neighborhoods, in the businesses and most importantly, in our homes.”

At the same time, educators need to develop a spirit of collaboration when dealing with school district officials, community leaders and parents, she said. “I hope that our communities are realizing today that education is a joint effort.”

That was the underlying theme of an essay Myrick submitted as part of the Teachers of the Year application process.

“Education has suffered for too long from a web of antagonistic relationships: administration against employees . . . businesses against schools,” she wrote.

“Such an ‘us against them’ sentiment forces families and the larger school community to take sides on issues while the needs of students become lost among battles for control and righteousness.”

For example, as a union leader, Myrick said, she has been able to improve relations between the district and teachers by working out fiscal problems through joint budget committee sessions.

“We seek solutions to, rather than positions on, contentious issues,” she wrote in her essay.

And as a teacher, Myrick has advocated reaching out to non-English-speaking families and encouraging parents to help instructors determine their children’s educational needs.

“It is extremely satisfying to see the partnership grow because we have made a commitment to serving each family’s needs and accepting every family’s authority to make decisions about the way their child’s school should operate, regardless of what language they speak or how early or recently they settled in this country,” the essay said.

A four-member county education panel will review Myrick’s application and comments, along with those of at least 60 other candidates, and will send the names of 12 nominees to the state by Sept. 27.

In October, state officials will select five finalists from the pool of statewide candidates. One of those will be selected to represent California in the national contest.

“I certainly hope that I go on,” Myrick said.