Post Recognizes Outstanding Loudoun Educators

Mountain View Teacher, Mill Run Principal Chosen

By Michael Birnbaum (Contact)

Saturday, May 16, 2009

Jim Jenkins, a fifth-grade teacher at Mountain View Elementary School in Purcellville, doesn't need standardized tests to find out how his students are doing. He just asks them. Students lead conferences with parents and teachers at report card time, and they assess themselves.

"They're pretty stringent with themselves," Jenkins said. "I don't think kids are blank slates. Giving them responsibility . . . is a good idea."

Although Paul Vickers, principal of Mill Run Elementary School in Ashburn, has made the acquaintance of his students from a higher perch, he is deeply involved in their lives. Last week, he worked to help a student's family in the wake of a fire that leveled their home.

Courtesy of Loudoun County Public Schools

2008-2009 Agnes Meyer Award recipient, Jim Jenkins, a fifth-grade teacher at Mountain View Elementary School in Purcellville.

Jenkins and Vickers are this year's Loudoun County winners of The Washington Post's education awards. Jenkins, who has taught in the Loudoun school system nine years and has been an educator 33 years, won the Agnes Meyer Outstanding Teacher Award. Vickers, who has worked in Loudoun 18 years and has been a principal for 12, won the Distinguished Educational Leadership Award.

In Fauquier County, Jeff Pingrey, a seventh-grade teacher at Cedar Lee Middle School, won the Agnes Meyer award, and Marypat Warter, principal of Claude Thompson Elementary School, won the Distinguished Educational Leadership Award.

Although Jenkins teaches several subjects as an elementary school teacher, his specialties are math and science. He has taken short breaks from teaching to study oceanography and aeronautics, to the benefit of his students.

"It's easy to get them excited about it," he said. Lately, he has been teaching them to use sextants to calculate heights. "That's almost magical to them," he said. "And it gives them some confidence to be doing some basic trigonometry in the fifth grade."

One parent saw a big change in her son after he spent a year in Jenkins's class.

Courtesy of Loudoun County Public Schools

2008-2009 DELA Award recipient, Paul Vickers, principal of Mill Run Elementary School.

"He just really came into his own last year," said Kathleen Evangelisto, whose son Matthew is in the sixth grade. "I think Jim brings out confidence in kids."

Jenkins brings out confidence in adults, too. Several former students wrote in support of his nomination for the Meyer award, saying that they had followed his example and become teachers. Evangelisto said she had long considered pursuing education certification but finally made the plunge only after Jenkins encouraged her to do so after she volunteered in his classroom last year.

At Mill Run several years ago, Vickers was heading a school that was a couple of hundred students over capacity. Rather than allow boundary shifts to disrupt the school's social fabric, he moved two grades into the adjoining Eagle Ridge Middle School.

It was an unconventional approach that required some delicate public relations work, a new walky-talky system and an assistant stationed at the other school. But Vickers was able to hold things together in the year before a new elementary school opened nearby and relieved some of the pressure.

In the end, Vickers said, there were some payoffs.

"Those fourth- and fifth-graders who spent a year over at Eagle Ridge, they really had no trepidation about going to middle school," he said.

Teachers praised his attentiveness and feedback. One mentioned that after a classroom visit, he often leaves behind little sticky notes with his thoughts and a smiley face.

"When I was a teacher myself, I remember how important immediate feedback was," Vickers said. "It's important to me to give it, too."

Tagged: Ashburn, award, education, Loudoun County Public Schools, Mill Run Elementary School, Mountain View Elementary, Purcellville, teachers

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