WEST HARTFORD — -
Whiting Lane Elementary School teacher Kristi Luetjen is expected to be named Connecticut's 2010 Teacher of the Year in an announcement scheduled for 1 p.m. today at the school.
Luetjen, the town's educator of the year, teaches kindergarten and has been praised for integrating children with special needs into the general education classrooms, and incorporating weekly yoga into class to help students focus.
A recent breast cancer survivor, she also devotes time at Hartford Hospital counseling young women who have been diagnosed with the disease.
School officials must keep mum about the honor until state Education Commissioner Mark McQuillan makes the official introduction at Whiting Lane.
Luetjen would get to meet President Barack Obama and U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan in a spring visit to Washington, D.C. She also would become a candidate for National Teacher of the Year.
Connecticut's 2009 top teacher, Anthony Mullen, was awarded that distinction in April at a White House ceremony. Mullen, a former New York City police captain, is a special education teacher at an alternative high school in Greenwich.
At a gathering of West Hartford teachers and administrators in August, the town's 2008-09 teacher of the year, Andrew Mayo, said Luetjen's "patience and perseverance and vision all shine clearly" when one watches her in the classroom.
"As inclusion becomes the model for education, her teaching is a new paradigm," Mayo said. He also spoke of Luetjen's successful battle against breast cancer and noted that the Whiting Lane community has helped raise more than $10,000 for cancer research.
In a speech following Mayo's remarks, Luetjen recalled a morning in 2007 when she entered her classroom in tears. Some time had passed since she began fighting the disease in February of that year. Despite her treatments, Luetjen had come to work every day, determined "to finish the school year I had started. ... To be there for that magical moment when kindergartners are no longer little and, all of a sudden, they are ready for first grade."
But the night before this particular morning, Luetjen had to shave her head. She came to school wearing a wig.
Co-workers tried to comfort her. "It looks so natural!" one said. "You look so beautiful," another told her. "You just need some big, gaudy earrings!" offered Principal Nancy DePalma.
Luetjen said she just prayed none of her students would notice the difference when they filed into the classroom to greet her. Soon enough, one perceptive boy named Max looked her up and down, thinking hard, Luetjen remembered. Then he concluded, excitedly, "Ms. Luetjen, I didn't know it was Crazy Hat and Hair Day!"
When it came to her battle, Luetjen said later, "I got by with the help of 20 5-year-olds. In my darkest hour, these children sustained me. Their desire to learn, their boundless energy, their enthusiasm and their unconditional love for me, their teacher, pushed me further than I thought I could go."
Luetjen, the town's educator of the year, teaches kindergarten and has been praised for integrating children with special needs into the general education classrooms, and incorporating weekly yoga into class to help students focus.
A recent breast cancer survivor, she also devotes time at Hartford Hospital counseling young women who have been diagnosed with the disease.
School officials must keep mum about the honor until state Education Commissioner Mark McQuillan makes the official introduction at Whiting Lane.
Luetjen would get to meet President Barack Obama and U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan in a spring visit to Washington, D.C. She also would become a candidate for National Teacher of the Year.
Connecticut's 2009 top teacher, Anthony Mullen, was awarded that distinction in April at a White House ceremony. Mullen, a former New York City police captain, is a special education teacher at an alternative high school in Greenwich.
At a gathering of West Hartford teachers and administrators in August, the town's 2008-09 teacher of the year, Andrew Mayo, said Luetjen's "patience and perseverance and vision all shine clearly" when one watches her in the classroom.
"As inclusion becomes the model for education, her teaching is a new paradigm," Mayo said. He also spoke of Luetjen's successful battle against breast cancer and noted that the Whiting Lane community has helped raise more than $10,000 for cancer research.
In a speech following Mayo's remarks, Luetjen recalled a morning in 2007 when she entered her classroom in tears. Some time had passed since she began fighting the disease in February of that year. Despite her treatments, Luetjen had come to work every day, determined "to finish the school year I had started. ... To be there for that magical moment when kindergartners are no longer little and, all of a sudden, they are ready for first grade."
But the night before this particular morning, Luetjen had to shave her head. She came to school wearing a wig.
Co-workers tried to comfort her. "It looks so natural!" one said. "You look so beautiful," another told her. "You just need some big, gaudy earrings!" offered Principal Nancy DePalma.
Luetjen said she just prayed none of her students would notice the difference when they filed into the classroom to greet her. Soon enough, one perceptive boy named Max looked her up and down, thinking hard, Luetjen remembered. Then he concluded, excitedly, "Ms. Luetjen, I didn't know it was Crazy Hat and Hair Day!"
When it came to her battle, Luetjen said later, "I got by with the help of 20 5-year-olds. In my darkest hour, these children sustained me. Their desire to learn, their boundless energy, their enthusiasm and their unconditional love for me, their teacher, pushed me further than I thought I could go."