A teacher in the South Central School District for the past 32 years is our WJBD-WSIQ Teacher of the Week.
Lisa Mazanek says she’s wanted to be a teacher ever since 3rd grade because of the impression her teacher made on her. While admitting the job can be stressful at times, looking back now a year before retirement she wouldn’t have wanted to do anything differently because of what she can do for her students.
“There’s one year, in particular, I remember a very troubled student and some days could be very unlikeable. But there was something about that student that pushed me to help him and two years ago I attended his high school graduation and he was thrilled. He made it.”
Mazanek has taught in second grade in all but the first five years she was at South Central. She admits the COVID-19 pandemic was hard on her as she had to develop her own Chromebook skills to be able to help the students.
Mazanek still didn’t like the idea of her students just having the Chromebook and worked with the other second-grade teacher to prepare lessons on paper to go along with the computer learning.
“Parents didn’t sign up for this. It was very hard for parents to be the teachers when their student had to come home and be quarantined. So I have a Remind app on my phone that I can send messages to my parents and they can communicate with me. If I want to send a message to all of my parents at once I could. I’ve told them to call me anytime, we will work it out and I will work with you. That way if a student comes back and doesn’t have their work finished, I skipped my free period, we worked and got the student caught up.”
The principal at South Central Grade, Sara Rose, says Mazanek adds a lot to their staff.
“She is one of our veteran teachers always here helping others and being a great role model for other teachers. Always coming up with new things in the classroom. We are just blessed to have her as part of our team.”
Rose agrees with Mazanek that the parents did not sign up for what COVID- 19 has brought, but says they and the community as a whole have stepped up and pulled through. She feels in the end they will have a stronger community because of it.
If you would like to nominate a Teacher of Week you can do so at WJBDradio.com.
