Area Teachers Are Honored With Kudos, $25,000 Awards

Los Angeles teacher Rhoda Coleman is used to spending her own money to keep her classroom running--that extra little something she kicks in for supplies and books, even the $500 she spent on the recent field trip to Knotts Berry Farm as an end-of-the-year treat.

But Coleman got a financial payback of sorts Saturday in the form of a $25,000 check that came with being named one of the 138 national recipients of the 10th annual Milken Family National Educational Award.

The 50-year-old from Glendale, who has been a teacher for 28 years, received her check at a Saturday dinner held in honor of what the Milken group calls inspiring American educators.

Local winners included Coleman, a fifth-grade teacher in the bilingual education program at Buford Elementary near Los Angeles International Airport; Eleanor Vargas, a special education teacher at Murchison Elementary in Los Angeles; and Judith Magsaysay, a principal at Pio Pico Elementary in Santa Ana.

Key to the award is a $25,000 check recipients can spend in any way they choose. Although the local winners said they wanted to assist school programs, they added that the money would go a long way to compensate for years of reaching into their own pockets in the face of constant education cutbacks.

“It’s not just the money--it’s being treated as a professional, with respect,” Coleman said. “That all comes in pretty short supply sometimes.

“But when you’re a teacher, your pockets are always inside-out. There are just too many things you want to do with your students. And, always, there is just too little money.”

Coleman said she had no regrets about taking her fifth-graders to a going-away party at Knotts Berry Farm. “It was my gift to my kids,” she said. “It’s painful getting an award with this much money knowing that all your kids at school are on the free lunch program.”

For local winners, the news of the award has turned life into a whirlwind of rare kudos, telephone calls, pats on the back and coping with the envied problem of how to spend all that money.

Wearing their yellow award ribbons, they gathered Saturday at the Century Plaza Hotel prior to the awards dinner that capped a week of seminars, guest speakers and networking with some of the leading teachers and principals in the nation--all fellow winners.

“You never think it’s going to be you,” Vargas, 58, a resident of South Pasadena, said of her award. “You look around at all these other great teacher working beside you, at the things they have going, and you ask, why would you win something?”

The Milken awards, sponsored by brothers Lowell and Michael Milken, the fallen financier, honored 138 educators chosen from millions of leading professionals.

“The Milkens wanted to find a way to give something back to the people who helped them along the way,” said Johnny Cho, a foundation spokesman. “And for them, the important people were their teachers over the years.”

Coleman, who teaches bilingual students during a critical year of their transfer from Spanish to English, was noted for her classroom use of costumes and role-playing--as well as the use of laser discs and other computer technology--to make difficult lessons easier.

“If we’re talking about immigration issues, I’ll come to class dressed as my own grandmother--with a long black skirt and a tablecloth for a babushka--and I’ll tell my grandmother’s immigrant story as I introduce them to the vocabulary,” she said. “For the kids, it makes the strange familiar, and introduces the new words in a context.”

Coleman said she planned to donate some of her award for a bilingual scholarship fund for a graduating eighth-grader from her school. She also planned to purchase some video software for the teachers’ resource center.

“I want to do something for the school that’s lasting,” Coleman said. “And it won’t hurt that I can use it in my classroom as well.”

Concerned about the high number of Latino children in special education, Vargas began using a unique reading and literacy program that officials say has brought astounding results.

“Your hope is to teach your children as fast as you can, to get them out of special education and back into regular classes among their peers,” said Vargas, who also runs a popular after-school lending library. “And we’re doing that. But it’s hard at times. As soon as my kids get good and get to my heart, I lose them.”

The 17-year teaching veteran said she planned to make some sorely needed additions to the school library’s collection of Spanish language books.

Teachers called the weeklong series of seminars and meetings a refreshing break from the pressures of the classroom. “You look around at all these teachers and educators from all around the country and you know that these are the movers and the shakers from their individual states,” said Magsaysay, 41, who lives in Yorba Linda.

“And then you stop and realize that ‘hey, that’s me right in there among them.’ ” . . . You realize that you belong there.”