Alora Haynes, chair for the Fine Arts Program, Santa Fe College
In her office at Santa Fe College, Alora Haynes is proud of the walls covered with pictures of past students and the books filled with thank-you notes from the young minds she has touched.
After teaching ballet at Santa Fe and other local studios for the past 25 years, the college’s fine arts program chair has influenced a great number of dancers in the area, including Raven Moore.
“Overall, she’s probably my favorite professor,” said Moore, a second-year dance major at Santa Fe. “She’s always so positive. When I’m tired or just down, she’s still pushing and still motivating you.”
Haynes started dancing when she was 6 years old and started teaching dance just four years later. At age 10, she began attending dance intensives during the summer, where she learned from some of the best international dance instructors. After each event, she would come back and teach what she had learned to her home dance studio.
“From a very young age, I discovered I had a teacher inside of myself,” Haynes said. “I just couldn’t wait — not only to go every summer but to come back and teach it.”
Haynes went on to get a master’s degree in dance from Florida State University and dance professionally for The Alabama Ballet before she began teaching dance full time.
Since becoming the chair of the fine arts program seven years ago, Haynes has had to cut back to teaching just one advanced ballet class each semester, but that hasn’t diminished the relationship she has with her students.
“I actually know and love every single one of my students,” she said. “The good dancers, the not-so-good dancers and the rhythmically challenged are all beautiful people, and I’m grateful to teach them.”
Patty Lipka, program director, Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention
You don’t have to work at a school to be an educator. Patty Lipka, program director at the Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention, has been teaching classes at different museums for 26 years. Today, Lipka offers innovative science classes at the Cade Museum’s creativity lab, ranging from “Solid, Liquid, Splat” for students ages six and up.
In 2011, Lipka moved from Wisconsin, where she wrote educational programs for museums, to Gainesville to work at the Cade Museum, where she now develops new ideas for courses and teaches some of the museum’s children’s classes, which are offered four times each week.
Jennifer Denault, development director for the Cade Museum, has two children who both enjoy attending Lipka’s classes at the creativity lab.
“Patty just has this innate ability to make everything fun and entertaining,” she said. “She’s funny, and she doesn’t talk down to kids. She talks to them like they’re going to get it.”
Denault said Lipka is always happy to answer student’s questions, even if they don’t quite pertain to the subject. In fact, Lipka lets students text her with any questions they have after watching television episodes of popular shows such as “The Big Bang Theory” or “Star Trek.”
“I never get tired of seeing a student get an ‘aha’ moment,” Lipka said.
Lipka’s motivation for teaching, aside from a love of getting children’s questions answered, stems from the type 1 diabetes diagnosis her son received in 2006. It was a turning point in her life, as she realized that with every student who came into her classroom, she had an opportunity to help someone become interested in science, giving society one more mind to find a cure for life-changing diseases.
“It’s too late for me to find a cure, but for somebody else, maybe not,” she said. “I’ve just got to make that light bulb go on and stay on.”Dekle Vickers and Lewis Rhodes, technology teachers, Howard Bishop Middle School
Students in the Academy of Technology and Gifted Studies at Howard Bishop Middle School are confident that they can count on the two technology teachers who remain invested in their success. Dekle Vickers and Lewis Rhodes, the seventh- and sixth-grade technology teachers, respectively, work hard to make sure each student gets the most out of the accelerated program.
Vickers has worked as a technology teacher at Howard Bishop for 17 years. Prior to teaching technology, he taught exceptional student education at Gainesville High School and A. Quinn Jones.
Vickers said that as a teacher, he feels it is his job to teach his students how to learn in order to prepare them for life beyond the classroom.
“To me, it isn’t so much that they know the facts,” Vickers said. “What’s important is that they know how to take what a professor or a boss wants them to do and learn how to do that.”
Rhodes also focuses on preparing his students for their future jobs. He has taught technology at Howard Bishop for eight years and aims to get his all of his students to pass a technology certification exam before the end of each school year.
“I think I’ve always had education inside me,” Rhodes said. “I’ve always felt comfortable teaching, sharing and instructing.”
During the summer, Rhodes also hosts a technology camp at Howard Bishop, where he gives students a chance to see an aspect of technology they don’t have time to focus on during the school year. In the upcoming camp, students will have the opportunity to spend up to three weeks learning how to use Adobe Flash to create their own animations.
Joseph Dickens, a sixth-grade social studies teacher at Howard Bishop, said he views both Rhodes and Vickers as role models at the school.
“What truly makes them great teachers is their willingness and eagerness to push their boundaries and curriculum, which gives the students access to more programs and more opportunities to learn,” Dickens said.
Everett McConn, band director, Fort Clarke Middle School
Painted on the wall outside the band room at Fort Clarke Middle School is the question, “What kind of day is it? It’s a great day to be the Fort Clarke band!” For students, the sentiment consistently rings true, especially with Everett McConn as the band director. McConn has been the band director at Fort Clarke Middle School for 16 years, and in that time, the band has performed at such a consistently high level that they received the Sudler Cup in 2011, the highest national honor a middle school band can earn.
McConn has worked in education since 1977, when he got his first job as a band director at P.K. Yonge Developmental Research School. During his three years at P.K. Yonge, however, McConn says he never thought of himself as a teacher.
“I was a band director. Teachers were people who kept the kids busy while they were waiting to come to your class,” McConn said, laughing.
It wasn’t until later, while working at Howard Bishop Middle School, that it became clear to him that teaching was his gift. McConn had always enjoyed his job, but it wasn’t until he realized that he was, in fact, a teacher that he truly understood his purpose in education.
“I teach students through the medium of band, but what they’re really learning about is life and how to be successful,” McConn said.
Kelly Langston, a teacher at Hidden Oak Elementary School, is thankful her daughter had the opportunity to be in the Fort Clarke band and believes that McConn greatly contributed to her daughter’s success as a musician in high school.
“Mr. McConn was central in helping her gain confidence in herself, allowing her to bloom while she was in middle school from an uncertain, not-feeling-part-of-a-group elementary school student to a leader both in band and in student council at Fort Clarke,” Langston said. “His teaching extends beyond the classroom and into life.”
Will Frazer, math teacher, F.W. Buchholz High School
Will Frazer didn’t always plan on becoming a teacher. In fact, after he graduated from the University of Florida with a degree in accounting in 1980, he went to work on Wall Street, but after six and a half years, Frazer left his job for charity work.
Frazer only stumbled upon his passion for education after volunteering as a golf coach at F.W. Buchholz High School. After the fall semester, the school’s principal approached him about filling in for a math teacher who was retiring. Frazer taught the class for the spring semester and says that from then on, he was hooked on teaching. He has taught at Buchholz ever since, teaching courses ranging from AP government to geometry.
While most teachers teach only one or two different classes a year, Frazer is teaching seven different subjects the 2013-2014 school year.
“I do that intentionally. I find it stimulating to be doing something different every period,” Frazer said.
On top of his seven classes, Frazer also coaches the math team with fellow math teacher and former student Ziwei Lu. The school’s math team has won ten straight state championships, tying the record for the most wins, as well as seven straight national Mu Alpha Theta championships.
Lu said that working with Frazer has been a great experience, and he enjoys seeing how involved Frazer is in students’ lives.
“Every time there is a long break, Mr. Frazer will sit down to have lunch with parents,” Lu said.
Frazer said that aside from enjoying the subjects he teaches, he likes being able to help students prepare for college.
“I’ve been able to get them excited about what I teach and give them some guidance on majors for college and career choices,” Frazer said. “It’s kind of exciting to see some of these kids dream about some of these elite universities and then have those dreams come true four years later.”
Jessica Morey, social studies teacher, St. Francis Catholic High School
Before coming to one of Jessica Morey’s social studies classes for the first time, students at St. Francis Catholic High School are often timid, anticipating what they’ve heard is a hard class with a strict teacher. But, oftentimes, those students are the same ones who thank Morey for providing an interesting, challenging class at the end of the year.
“Even when kids’ grades might not be the highest in my courses compared to some of their other courses, they have been challenged, and I think some of them actually appreciate that,” Morey said.
Tara Dixon was one of those students who appreciated the challenge. Dixon, who graduated from Saint Francis in 2012, was in Morey’s class her senior year.
“She knew that we had more potential than what we put forth, so she would just work us to our full potential,” she said.
Morey has taught social studies classes including U.S. history, government and economics to the juniors and seniors at Saint Francis for three years.
“In school, I would’ve guessed I’d prefer teaching U.S. history, and then, I got the assignment for government and economics — and it turns out I love teaching that,” Morey said. “It’s really fun.”
She earned her degree in social studies education and politics from New York University and then moved to Gainesville, where she started teaching at a local charter school. She then took a break from teaching to pursue a master’s degree in education. After completing her master’s, she worked at Newberry High School before landing at St. Francis.
“My favorite part is when kids are asking good questions and I can either answer those questions or direct them towards the answers,” Morey said. “I really like to see them be curious.”
Alta Johnson, student services specialist, Hawthorne Middle/High School
From athletics to academics, Alta Johnson is involved in it all. Johnson has been working at Hawthorne Middle/High School for the past 23 years and is now the school’s student services specialist, a position that allows her to help students get accepted into the colleges of their dreams and earn the scholarships they need to pay for higher education.
“I like to help the kids and show them all of their other choices,” Johnson said.
Johnson’s decision to go into education was influenced by her family — in fact, most of her family members have a job related to education.
Hawthorne has been a mainstay throughout her life — Johnson graduated in the school’s class of 1976. Her son, Macauley, later graduated from the school in 2009.
After high school, Johnson went on to Santa Fe College and the University of West Florida, where she earned a degree in physical education and recreational leadership. While in college, she also played for the women’s basketball team.
Johnson later returned to Hawthorne to coach the women’s basketball and softball teams before eventually becoming involved in student services.
Most recently, Johnson was named Alachua County Public School’s 2014 School Related Employee of the Year.
Angela Wright, a computer lab proctor at Hawthorne, believes Johnson fully deserved the recognition because she always gives 100 percent —
“Whether she is helping a student apply for a scholarship or college, organizing a trip, working on a community service project or spearheading most of the school activities in her position as activity director, she knows how to get the job done,” Wright said. “She has gathered lots of know-how over the years and knows when and how to apply it.”