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October 28, 2009

Shikellamy School District teacher honored

By Amanda O’Rourke

SUNBURY — Marcia Slaton holds a bachelor’s and two master’s degrees, but her philosophy of teaching came from a 6-year-old.

Slaton, one of 12 finalists for Pennsylvania’s Teacher of the Year Award, said that philosophy came to her when she was a first-grade classroom teacher leading one of her pupils to her bus at the end of a hectic day.

“She stopped me and she said, ‘Mrs. Slaton, you taught me to read, you’re the best teacher in the neighborhood and you smell good,’ ” Slaton remembered Wednesday.

That girl, Slaton said, summed up everything she strives to be to this day.

“I want to teach children to be literate. I want to improve my community,” Slaton said. “And I don’t want to stink.”

Slaton is a reading teacher and literacy coach at the Chief Shikellamy and Grace S. Beck elementary schools in the Shikellamy School District, where she has spent her entire career.

Through the district’s state-sponsored reading recovery program, Slaton offers one-on-one intervention to first-graders who are struggling with their reading skills. As a literacy coach, Slaton assists fellow teachers in their reading instruction.

Chosen as a finalist from about 150,000 educators across the state, Slaton is proud, not of her accomplishment but of the work she and her colleagues do day in and day out.

“I just work with fantastic people, and I have learned so much from them,” Slaton said, tearing up for the first time, but not the last, during her interview. “The people here at Shikellamy are incredible people. They are highly professional, kind people who care about their jobs and try to do the best for our kids every day.”

The tears, Slaton admits, come from recent headlines the district has garnered for failing to meet adequate yearly progress standards under the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment. The headlines, Slaton said, have disheartened and inspired.

“These people are here at 6 a.m. and leave at 5:45 p.m.,” she said. “And they don’t have to do that. Every district has some place they have to improve. My heart bleeds for my fellow educators.”

Slaton spent her first 18 years at Shikellamy, beginning in 1987, as a first-grade classroom teacher. She eventually earned master’s degrees in reading and instructional technology, and in 2002, she became a nationally board certified teacher that required an extra 500 hours of training, half of which she paid for out of her own pocket.

She did it, she said, because she loves to learn, and, according to her colleagues, she loves to pass that passion on to the teachers she works with.

Slaton acts as a mentor for the district’s new teachers and recently spearheaded the creation of a parent professional learning community that brings parents into the school monthly to learn ways to help their children excel.

Though her recognition in Harrisburg was nice, Slaton, who calls teaching “the highest calling,” said it is student achievement that really drives her, and she remembered one child’s milestone in particular.

It was a first-grader who came to her through the district’s reading recovery program because, at 7 years old, she couldn’t read. After three days, the child finished a little book titled “Cat on a Mat.”

“She jumped up and held the book over her head and said, ‘I can read it! I can read it!’ ” Slaton remembered, and sighed, smiling. “I could tell you a million stories.”

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