Calaveras Office of Education honors county’s top teachers

The best and brightest faculty members from each Calaveras County school district were honored Thursday at Ironstone Vineyards in a county-wide Rotary Club luncheon.

A teacher from each of four districts and the county’s Office of Education were selected for this year’s Teacher of the Year award. Teachers are honored in April because it is Public Schools Month in California.

The winner from Bret Harte Union High School District, Roy Beck, earned the award after being nominated in three previous years. A 25-year teacher in the district, Beck is best known for the many hours he puts in as the Future Farmers of America adviser at Bret Harte High School.

Beck accepted his award expressing his belief that the honor for him reflects a community effort and not just those of one man.

“We can’t do this without a community that’s entirely supportive of the agricultural community,” he said.

Avery Middle School special education teacher Mona Kayton won from Vallecito Union School District.   

Kayton explained that she did not initially plan to teach special education when she started her career at Valley Springs Elementary School. She somewhat nervously entered a room full of sixth-graders in the 1970s, she said, “and never looked back.”

Joan Nelson, honoree from the Mark Twain Union Elementary School District, has helped her students gain an appreciation for poetry, according to her principal, Mark Twain Elementary’s Karl Keller.

“My passion is to get kids to read,” Nelson said.

Calaveras Unified School District Superintendent Jim Frost spoke warmly of his district’s award winner, San Andreas Elementary School teacher Shari Pargett.

“Most of the very good teachers reach about 95 percent of their students,” Frost said. “There’s a few at the very top who have a zealous passion that every child can learn.”

To step into Pargett’s classroom is to see that she is one of them, he said.

From the Calaveras County Office of Education, Mike Nagano, of Calaveras River Academy, was selected as Teacher of the Year.

His students, Matt Crittenden and Katie Rodriguez, gave the simple reasons why Nagano deserved the award.

"He makes everything clear on how to do it,” Crittenden said.

“He’s a very professional teacher ... and very thoughtful,” Rodriguez added.