Ventura Educator Awarded State’s Top Honor : Education: Will Rogers School instructor is one of five 1994 Teachers of the Year. She is first in county to win the award.

A Ventura teacher who speaks five languages has become the first educator in the county to receive the state’s top honor for public school instructors.

Aline Yee Grossman from Will Rogers School is one of five teachers in the state named 1994 Teachers of the Year.

The 40-year-old Grossman, who last week learned that she had made the final five, flew Tuesday with her husband to Sacramento, where she spent Wednesday interviewing with the 10-member panel that will decide which of the winners will represent California at the national level.

The state will announce its decision in two weeks.

But Grossman said in a telephone interview from Sacramento on Wednesday that she is happy enough just receiving the state award.

“I feel like it could not be any better than this,” she said. “I don’t feel like it’s a competition at all. All five of us have been named Teachers of the Year.”

Grossman first won the award this year for Ventura Unified School District’s best teacher and then went on to be named Ventura County Teacher of the Year for 1994.

She and the other four state winners were chosen from a list of 57 finalists that included a handful of private school educators.

Because the state insisted that the winning teachers keep the award secret until Wednesday, Grossman said she was looking forward to sharing the news with her bilingual class of fourth- and fifth-grade students when she returns to school today. “I wanted to bring them all with me,” she said.

But Will Rogers Principal Jose Montano said he has already told the students about the award.

“The kids in her room, they’re just bubbling over,” Montano said. “They support her so much, they like her so much, it’s becoming their honor too.”

In explaining their selection of Grossman, state officials cited her as representative of a growing number of teachers who come to the profession late.

A daughter of Chinese immigrants, Grossman graduated from UCLA in 1974 and then worked as an Italian interpreter on an American cruise ship.

She later spent five years directing a dance troupe for children in Los Angeles, worked one year in a Mexican orphanage and traveled around Europe for four years teaching dance.

After marrying Ventura attorney Kirk Grossman, she settled in Ventura and in 1990 earned her teaching credentials at the local satellite campus of Cal State Northridge.

Besides Chinese, Italian and English, Grossman is fluent in French and Spanish. She is the only bilingual teacher among the five winners.

As a state teacher of the year, Grossman will get up to 30 days off in 1994 to travel around speaking to parent-teacher associations, teachers groups and other organizations.

Ventura County Supt. of Schools Charles Weis said the yearly recognition of the state’s best teachers serves two purposes for other public school educators.

“It gives them a voice so the general public recognizes we have some outstanding teachers, that the best and the brightest are staying in the profession,” Weis said. “The second thing is it sets a standard for other teachers to get the same type of recognition if they are willing to put in the extra effort that it takes to become expert at their craft. It does take a lot of effort. It’s a hard job.”

The other four top teachers for 1994 are an English and social science teacher from a Norwalk middle school, a preschool and kindergarten teacher from Yuba City, a high school speech teacher from Union City and a teacher of homeless children in San Diego.