By Blake Wales –
With all the hard work that goes on in Penn Manor High School – preparing lesson plans, dealing with students, grading papers, handling phone calls it would seem that school staff would get the recognition and thanks they deserve.
But unfortunately most of the time students neglect to thank the teachers and staff for all their hard work. Fortunately the school board has an award to show the teachers and staff that what a great job they are doing. This award only comes around once a year and staff members say it is a great honor to be elected as “Employee of the Year.”
The two lucky ladies who won the award at the high school had no idea it was coming until they got the news.
Diana Alston who has been a secretary at Penn Manor for 12 years was recognized this year for all her had work. But it came as a definite surprise to her and she recalled her emotional reaction.
“I am a very emotional person so when Mr.Gale told me the news I immediately began to cry,” said Alston.
To Alston, it was a great honor to win this award because, she said, you go through your days not thinking your hard work is being noticed and its nice to know that someone was paying attention.
There is outstanding educator and outstanding employee. Diana was chosen for outstanding employee because of her postion as secretary.
“I felt that I won really for not myself, I won for all of us secretaries because we all work so hard,”, said Alston.
Another staff member worthy of recognition is family and consumer science teacher Mindy Rottmund. Rottmund won second place this year in a national competition for FCS projects.
She was recognized by the American Association of Family and Consumer Science for her program on diet literacy that she completed in 2011.
Rottmund was selected as the winner of the state-wide competition in Pennsylvania in 2011, which made her the state representative when she competed as the FCS teacher of Pennsylvania against a representative from every other state.
“I was pleasantly surprised that I won this award,” said Rottmund.
Mindy said her goal was to make her curriculum more dynamic by incorporating other subjects like math, reading, and writing into her program.