Mary Coughlin has been selected as this year's Teacher of the Year for Whitney Tech. She has been a Social Studies teacher at Whitney for 4 years.
As a child of two educators, she felt it was her destiny to become a teacher. Although the promise of new school supplies every year was a definite factor, her decision to become a teacher was based on her desire to offer students a personal invitation to explore the life long gift of education.
Ms. Coughlin began her career at J.M. Wright Tech, while there she learned that teaching was much more then what her education and training prepared her for. She found that she could get much more from her students when she invested her time into learning who they were and where they came from. This practice helped her improve her teaching style to create real-life experiences in her classroom, and she has continued to challenge her students with relevant tasks and projects. Her students have participated in mock trials and elections. She has helped to organize various student activities such as the CAPT incentive field trip and class trips to the State Capital, class socials and fundraisers, multicultural assemblies and most recently the Eli Whitney African American Hall of Fame. |
