GLENDALE : Pupils Put Him First in His Second Career

A man who left a successful career in the entertainment business at age 40 to launch a second career in teaching is Glendale Unified School District’s nominee for 1994 California Teacher of the Year.

Stan Bartosiak, a history teacher known to his seventh-grade students at Roosevelt Middle School simply as “Mr. B,” was chosen for his “magnetism” in the classroom and an ability to motivate and involve students on a campus that has one of the highest numbers of at-risk youth in the district, officials said.

“He is always fresh for the particular class at hand,” Roosevelt Principal Judith White said. “His lessons are dramatic, exciting and startling. Students actively participate, and no one wants to miss his class.”

From 1992 to 1994, Bartosiak, now 47, was elected by the Roosevelt student body as the school’s teacher of the year.

He said his decision to become a junior high school teacher was not an easy one. It came after Bartosiak had spent years as a student, earning a doctorate in Russian language studies at UCLA. He had taught at the college level and worked a variety of jobs, including seven years as a well-paid talent representative.

“I had a comfortable salary, but when I was turning 40 I was going through a change of life and I said, ‘what do I want to feel when I’m turning 50? That I negotiated another $10,000 an episode for somebody?’ ” Bartosiak said. “I was always torn about what I wanted to do when I grew up.”

In 1987, Bartosiak became a substitute teacher in Glendale, taking stints at each of the district’s middle and high schools. He said he fell in love with Roosevelt instantly, and was eventually persuaded by Principal White to take a full-time position there, even though it required him to go back to school to complete a teaching credential.

He said he had always been dead-set against becoming a teacher, having been raised by a single mother who struggled to support her family on a schoolteacher’s salary. But he said he is glad he made the change.

“On the first day that I walked into class, when I knew I was responsible for these kids and they were responsible to me, I knew this is what I wanted to do for the rest of my life,” he said.

Bartosiak, who speaks five Slavic languages, said his students speak about 40 different native tongues. As a teacher, he said he tries to show that the school’s rich ethnic mix is an advantage, not an obstacle.

“We have a lot of at-risk kids here, but since the background I have is multilingual, I show them that we can celebrate the diversity. It’s not just a catch phrase, it really is valuable,” he said.

School district officials said Bartosiak’s nomination was approved by a panel of administrators and will be submitted to the Los Angeles County Office of Education, which will select 12 teachers from 65 nominees countywide.