Six Teachers to Receive Petrick Awards

Winners Will Get $2,000 From Charter Foundation

Four individual teachers and a teaching team have each been selected to receive a $2,000 Lori Petrick Educator Award from the Palisades Charter Schools Foundation. The award was established in 2003 to honor the late, much-beloved second grade teacher at Palisades Charter Elementary. This year’s winners are Jeff Lantos (Marquez Elementary), Marlene Morris (Canyon School), Charlena TerVeer and Kathie Yonemura (team teachers at Canyon), Shari Laham (Kenter Elementary) and Larry Newman (music teacher at Kenter, Marquez, Palisades Elementary and Topanga Elementary). The awards ($10,000 total) are underwritten by the Boone Foundation, and will be presented at a private home in Pacific Palisades on May 20 at 2 p.m. According to Charter Foundation member Paula Leonhauser, the award process was broadened this year in order to reach more nominees and honor more individuals who are achieving excellence in education within the Palisades Charter Complex. “Teachers, teams, departments, administrators, counselors, etc. who have been part of the Palisades Complex of schools for five or more years are eligible,” Leonhauser said. The Lori Petrick Award was first given in June 2003 to Bud Petrick, Lori’s husband. A year later, the honor went to former Palisades High principal Merle Price, who played a leading role in gaining charter status for all five Palisades schools. Last year, after gaining feedback from the school community and parents, the Foundation decided to expand the award by giving out five grants. Individuals interested in applying for the award were asked to either submit a 10-minute videotape or a 2,000-word essay. A panel of judges then observed each instructor in the classroom. “We received no applications from Paul Revere or Palisades High,” Leonhauser said. “There are many outstanding teachers at both schools and we feel perhaps they didn’t apply because the process is new. Next year we expect many more applicants.” The Boone Foundation is a philanthropic group whose mission is to support “passionate people who provide excellent programs to youth.” The family foundation has members residing in the Palisades and attending local schools. “After attending a Foundation board meeting, the family chose to underwrite the Petrick Awards as a show of support for our work to recognize community excellence in public school education,” Leonhauser said. The Palisadian-Post will profile each of this year’s winners, beginning with JEFF LANTOS, a well-known fifth-grade teacher at Marquez Elementary, where he has taught for 11 years. Lantos was a history major at Brown University and worked as a freelance journalist for Movieline magazine and the L.A. Times before entering the teaching profession in 1987. In the mid-1970s, he took a musical theater workshop in New York run by legendary conductor Lehman Engel. He later received a fellowship to the American Film Institute and then went back to school to get his teaching credential. ‘Teaching is a great job for someone with a liberal arts education–you put everything to use and are never bored,’ said Lantos, who has continually searched for creative ways of teaching basic classroom subjects like history, math and literature through the arts. He makes history come alive by having students perform musicals he has written with jazz musician Bill Augustine that deal with historical events like the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954 (‘Carry On’), the Constitutional Convention (‘Miracle in Philadelphia’), the Industrial Revolution (“Water and Power”) and the Louisiana Purchase (‘Hello Louisiana’). He has also written a children’s history book entitled ‘My Adventures with John Smith.” “Ask any fifth grader who’s not in my class what they think of history,” Lantos said. “They’ll tell you it’s boring. But there is a palpable change in the mood of the class when you don’t just tell them you’re going to learn history, but you tell them we’re going to sing a song or we’re going to put on a play. Then they get excited about learning.” Using this teaching philosophy, Lantos leads the school’s fifth graders in three musical productions each year, all of them performed in public. The Lori Petrick Award judges commented: ‘Jeff Lantos deserves a 10++ in best practices in education (10 is the highest score). He uses a strategy called ‘No Talk, No Chalk’ which allows the kids to ‘own’ the material. This is an excellent program with a clear and unique presentation of American history. His methods seem truly exceptional and innovative.’