“There is no wrong way to do art!” exclaims Erin Brady. In her classroom, and indeed throughout Cedarwood School, every piece of art that is created by a child is displayed. The campus is, in fact, literally wrapped in the artwork of her students.

Brady’s first love and passion is art. Born to an artist mother, she grew up immersed in the art world. After teaching third grade on the southshore at St. Martin’s Episcopal School for twenty-five years, she moved across Lake Pontchartrain and discovered Cedarwood Primary. “I just liked the feel of the place,” she says. When an opening for an art teacher became available, she jumped at the chance, and has been teaching there ever since.

Unlike most elementary school art classes, Brady’s class combines art appreciation and art history with the process of creating artwork. She picks a master artist and tells her classes the story of his life, shows the students his work and explains the medium that the artist worked in. Then the class is invited to create their own masterpieces using the style of the master artist. The results are stunning. For the unit on Michelangelo, Brady covered the underneath of tables with paper and had the children lie on their backs to paint. Another class learned about the Lasko cave paintings and later created their own rendition with charcoal on the walls. Even complicated artistic concepts such as surrealism do not daunt Brady. She taught her seventh grade a lesson on Hans Arp, a surrealist who believed in the art of chance. Students set out glue-covered canvas on the floor and randomly dropped colored papers from the tabletops. She says, “If the art room is not a mess at the end of the day, I have not done my job!”

Brady’s passion for art extends beyond her school to her entire community. Her two grandsons attend Woodlake Elementary. When she learned that they did not have an art program, she volunteered to write an art curriculum and coordinated with parent volunteers to implement it. Through Brady’s hard work and perseverance, Woodlake Elementary and several other St. Tammany Parish Schools have hired full-time art teachers. The PTA of Woodlake Elementary awarded her “Grandparent of the Year” for her efforts.

Erin Brady’s self-described hobby is “being a grandma.” She spent the summer enjoying her new grandbaby and visiting her daughter in Nashville. She also spent some time in her garden, re-charging and preparing her curriculum for the upcoming school year.

Ric Watkins
Covington High School
Chairman of Fine Arts Department
Director of Choral Activities
Founder and Producer of CLAPS

If energy and creativity had a face, it would be that of Ric Watkins. This 2002-2003 Teacher of the Year has been instrumental in making Covington High School a powerhouse of drama and choral talent. To date, his music and drama students have received over two million dollars in scholarship money.

Watkins has an impressive resume, including not only a master’s and doctorate in music education, but also professional training at the American Academy of the Dramatic Arts, Herman Berghoff Studios in New York, and the Metropolitan Opera Guild. He chose, however, to teach his craft instead of perform. “I always knew that I wanted to be a teacher. I had a great high school experience, and I wanted to enjoy that unique connection between a teacher and student that really isn’t available in any other profession.”

Watkins believes that he makes a difference everyday. “Drama builds confidence in students and crosses social, economic and academic boundaries. I love to watch a student blossom to his full potential. No matter what my students decide to do as a profession, dramatics prepares them to present themselves with confidence and to be comfortable speaking in front of others. It’s really important!” Watkins welcomes everyone into the drama program and provides roles for all, including the physically and mentally challenged. Many of Watkins’ former students have gone on to tour on Broadway or to work in television or movies. “It is so satisfying to get an e-mail from an old student and hear that they are working in the theater,” says Watkins.

Watkins has been teaching at Covington High School for the past fourteen years. He began producing professional-quality musical theatre at Covington High, and within a few years was receiving calls from area parents whose children attended other schools that did not offer theatrical productions. Inspired by the community interest, he created the Covington Louisiana Actors Playhouse System, a non-profit organization dedicated to the arts and open to all area high school students. Each summer CLAPS puts on three musical productions. This summer, Watkins and his staff produced “Pinocchio,” “Oliver!” and a patriotic musical review. “It’s really a departmental effort to put on these shows. It takes the work of many, many people,” he says.

CLAPS hires paid professionals to work with the students in lighting, as stage managers, in choreography and voice as they experience the whirlwind of true summer stock theatre and learn the craft of production. “The kids work so hard. Often we are performing one show in the morning and rehearsing for the next show that afternoon.” Not only are the CLAPS productions great experiences for the students, they are also a gift to the community. By bringing low-cost, professional-quality theatre to Covington, CLAPS opens the door to many who otherwise would not have the opportunity to experience it.

Teri Bickham
Oaks Montessori School, Hammond
Founder, Director and Teacher

If you’ve ever driven down Range Road in Hammond, you’ve probably passed Oaks Montessori School. Majestic oak trees shade its impressive 5 1/2-acre campus. Several Victorian cottages serving as classrooms are nestled in the idyllic setting. The property is dotted with Zen gardens, sculpture, water ponds and nature trails. It even has its own pottery studio and kiln. It is the perfect child-oriented setting for learning and fun.

Oaks Montessori School is the brainchild of Teri Bickham. A Montessori teacher since 1978, Teri had a vision to create a home-like school that encompassed the Montessori philosophy and focused on peace education, the nurturing of independent and peaceful people. “A Montessori education is hands-on learning that uses multi-age groups and exposes children at an early age to all aspects of education,” explains Bickham. “For example, math skills are taught in a non-linear way. First, students are introduced to big concepts and numbers and then they are broken down into smaller parts. We use the bank game to introduce primary students to mathematical concepts where each student plays the part of the mathematical operation they are performing. Young students work with very large numbers and really learn to understand place value so they are never afraid of working with large numbers later on. The beauty of the Montessori method is that everything is designed to be built upon in later years.”

Oaks Montessori was born in 1987 and moved to its current campus, a restored antique village, in 1990. It serves students from pre-school through eighth grade. Bickham is certified to teach all levels of Montessori and serves in the age group where she is most needed. Most recently, she had the opportunity to teach in the middle school, where students created a local FM radio station, WZEN (107.9), designed a board game using all species of vertebrates and invertebrates, and planned a May Day celebration. Bickham also trains teachers statewide in the Montessori method; Oaks is the only accredited Montessori Teacher Training Center in Louisiana.

This summer, Bickham accompanied her thirteen-year-old daughter, Isadora, on the tennis tournament circuit. She also spent some time in her garden and in the studio catching up on her artwork, as well as preparing the campus for this year.

Leslie Callaway
William Pitcher Junior High School, Covington
Earth Science

What would the world be like if children were taught the importance of conserving the environment at an early age and given responsibility to help find environmental solutions? Leslie Callaway is doing her part to make this utopian vision a reality. Trained as a biologist, Leslie became involved in environmental activism while in college. She worked under Jane Goodall in the “Roots and Shoots”
program, which focused on environmental education. Through her fieldwork in this program, she had the opportunity to work with kids for the first time. She learned how much she enjoyed sharing her knowledge of science with young people, and chose to become a teacher instead of continuing to pursue a career as a biologist. “Teaching allows me to enjoy all aspects of science and allows me to share my love of science by educating and connecting with kids.” As winner of the American Petroleum Institute’s “Best New Teacher of the Year for 2005,” she is proving that her decision to teach was the right one.

Callaway’s classes feature lots of hands-on education and science labs. She tries to integrate technology and real-world scenarios in her classroom whenever possible. “It’s so important to connect the science that the kids are learning to real life. It makes it much more meaningful.” One way she does this is by presenting the students with real-life scientific problems to solve. Last year, during a lesson on how nutria play a big role in Louisiana’s coastal wetland erosion, she asked them to come up with a solution to the nutria problem and find a way to get the nutria out of wetlands. The students were divided into groups and designed and “marketed” their ideas, complete with television commercials and Power Point presentations.

Like most great teachers, Callaway’s commitment to her students extends outside the classroom. She serves as the dance team sponsor for the school. When she’s not busy at school, you will find her reading, in her garden or training for a triathlon. This summer she and her husband spent a few weeks hiking and camping throughout Utah, and she prepared her classroom for this year. You can bet that her students can’t wait to see what she comes up with next!

Joe Soto
Christ Episcopal School, Covington
Physical Science, Biology, Physics

You may find Joe Soto teaching Biology to a group of seventh graders at Christ Episcopal School, but you are just as likely to find him fencing or taking to the open road on his Honda Shadow.

Born in New Orleans of Honduran heritage, Joe Soto initially wanted to pursue a career in medicine. But, as the saying goes, “Man plans and God laughs!” Soto was re-routed by his parish priest to teach in a needy Catholic elementary school. It was there that he made the accidental discovery that teaching, not medicine, was indeed his life’s work and passion.

As a teacher for thirty-one years, Soto has taught at Cabrini and De La Salle high schools in New Orleans, at Mandeville High for thirteen years and at Christ Episcopal School for the past five years. Joe Soto loves kids. “I love to be around their energy. It gives me a youthful perspective. I like to keep challenging myself with change in order to grow as an educator. I like to discover the different philosophies of different administrations and different challenges that come with working with different age groups.”

For the past thirty-two years, Joe Soto has also pursued another passion. He indulges his “Zorro complex” by practicing the art of fencing at Franco’s Athletic Club, where he has taught the sport for the past twenty-two years.

A self-described “lunatic” about science projects, Soto presents his classes with challenges that require organization and focusing skills. He hopes that his “in your face” teaching method helps students acquire self-confidence and shows them that they are more than they think they are. By moving them away from the security of simply memorizing material, he tries to stimulate their thinking. He is famous for telling his students things like “the only time success comes before work is in the dictionary” and inviting them to “feast at the table of knowledge and come back for seconds!”

Joe Soto’s commitment to youth not only spans three decades, but also continues past the school year. He is the youth leader at St. Jane de Chantal Church in Abita Springs and led a mission trip to Sewanee, Tennessee this summer to help build homes for the needy. He also hit the open road on his Honda 1100 Shadow to see America, with the intention of deliberately getting lost. “I have met some wonderful people on the road whose path I would never have crossed otherwise. Getting lost is my therapy and a way to recharge my batteries and rediscover the kindness of strangers.”