submitted photo
The “graduating” teachers included (left to right) back row: David Kohnhorst, Tim Curley, Dave Fichman, Kathleen Hawing, Andrew Gibson, Patty McVeigh, Bonnie Ramos and Kerry Oswald; middle row: Mary Mellinger, Caroline Matz, Sonia Castaneda, Lynn Ruebush, Craig Madison and Billie Perez; front row: Linda Dillon, Jorge Reis and Sally Weis.
Culminating a year of technology training and implementation in their respective classrooms, 17 Sonoma Valley public school teachers received their final stipends and certificates of completion.
The graduation ceremony was held at the Sonoma Community Center on Wednesday, May 9. The celebration concluded the second year of the popular Earn While You Learn professional development program for school district teachers.
The event was sponsored by the Sonoma Valley Education Foundation and brought together the graduates, other teachers, students, and school district administrators, including superintendent Barbara Young. Also attending the festivities were community members and donors to the program, notably Pam Winston from the Vadasz Family Foundation, which first conceived of the idea of bringing the Earn While You Learn program to Sonoma as a separate adjunct program to its parent organization at Foothill College in Los Altos.
The program is in its second year of a three-year pilot initiative launched by the Sonoma Valley Education Foundation in conjunction with the Sonoma Valley Unified School District and the Vadasz Foundation that also provided substantial leadership funding to make the program a reality. To date, 39 teachers have been trained with all but three completing all of the program requirements and receiving the final stipend.
Twenty new teachers out of an applicant pool of 37 are set to begin their three-week training phase this summer in the Sonoma Valley Technology Center, housed in the Sonoma Valley High School library. The innovative program enables the participants to acquire a variety of computer skills to put directly into use in their classrooms and enables them to receive both monetary rewards and continuing education units through Foothill College.
