Ronette Lusby-Brown and Lisa Thyer empower their students to feel connected.
Their impact has been powerful, with their own relationships and experiences providing an even more unique learning environment that fosters student growth.
The Golden Apple Foundation certainly has taken note as these two area high school teachers recently were named 2022 finalists for the prestigious Golden Apple Awards for Excellence in Teaching. The awards honor outstanding teachers for having lasting, positive impacts on the lives of their students and school communities, according to the foundation.
Lusby-Brown, a special-education teacher at Rich Township Fine Arts & Communication Campus in Richton Park, and Thyer, an English teacher at Stagg High School in Palos Hills, both are in their 16th year of teaching at their respective schools.
“These last two years have truly taken a toll on teachers, staff, families and students,” said Alan Mather, president of the Golden Apple Foundation. “While great teachers have always been impactful, this is particularly true during the past year, where these finalists have demonstrated the commitment to providing ongoing support and high-quality instruction to their students and we are proud to honor them.”
Recognizing that the intellectual, physical and communicative abilities of her students vary significantly, Lusby-Brown adopts individualized teaching methods for her students.
“I love what I do and I feel like I work hard at my craft, giving everything I have to ensure every student learns,” she said. “My students with special needs will not be underdogs. We have so much fun in my classroom celebrating the small things they do and those small things, I make them monumental in the rooms.”
Utilizing a mnemonic learning device in her Earth Science course, Lusby-Brown incorporated visual, auditory and interactive components to teach her students about the different celestial bodies of the solar system.
“My very earthly mother Jennifer saw unusual neighbors” certainly is a peculiar sentence that her students retain, as the first letter of each word stands for the eight planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.
“I had to film myself teaching a lesson while we were remote learning and I was teaching them about the solar system and the order of the planets — closest to farthest from the sun,” she said. “And then I would teach the characteristics like Venus is the hottest and Jupiter is the biggest, you know, just having fun with it. I feel like when I do little things like that it makes to easier for my students to grasp.”
Grasping the challenges of what it’s like to be a student in high school is something Lusby-Brown is reminded of often because she’s not too far removed from her own share of adversities.
“It got really bad living in Chicago Heights to the point where I didn’t know if I was going to see tomorrow,” she said. “Once we moved to Matteson I was on top of the world my freshman year with school choir and softball and then I got diagnosed with alopecia and lost my hair. To be this young girl with long, beautiful hair and then to wake up and it’s gone with no explanation sent me through a world of depression.”
She was bullied.
“I started school with a wig and people were really ignorant,” she said. “There was a student who made a bet for 50 cents to pull my hair off. I found out it was a senior prank. I just kept to myself in high school because I didn’t know who I could trust. All I knew was that once I got out of high school my passion was going to be for people bullied or picked on for something they have no control and a lot of out students are born with disabilities.”
She’s used her personal obstacles to provide greater opportunities for those entrusted to her classroom. Lusby-Brown’s students have someone they can trust. Always.
“I said I would make it a point to give back and be there for my students that people just write off or don’t treat them right, especially for something they have no control over,” she said. “We are not the underdogs. We are going to be the ones on top.”
Growing up with an older sister with cerebral palsy proved to be a blessing in many ways and set Lusby-Brown on a path toward helping others.
“My mother said I spoke (my sister’s) language,” she said. “She had a bad stutter but I understood everything she said, so I’ve been around special needs children my entire life and I always knew I wanted to teach special ed. Education has always been so important to me and when I moved in fourth grade I was so behind and had to catch up so I know what that feels like.”
Like Lusby-Brown, Thyer prides herself on her ability to connect with her students, which was never more important than these last two pandemic-laced years.
Recognizing the many challenges of remote learning, Thyer stepped up and voiced her concerns about how remote instruction styles needed to be updated so that teachers could teach effectively. Utilizing her teacher association and building and district committee positions, Thyer was able to implement changes to online learning policies that were hampering classroom success.
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One of Thyer’s many successful endeavors has also been one of her biggest, most emotional and personal challenges. The Stagg Voice of Witness class, a yearlong English course that asks students to use oral history to collect and share out stories from the school community, was started by dear friend and former colleague Mary Ogarek who died at 33 nearly eight years ago.
“We had a workshop and Mary was sick and missed it, but the reaction from the kids that got to go was so cool,” Thyer said. “So much of oral history and that interview process is listening intensive and you’ve got to focus on listening and allow them to tell their story. The kids absolutely loved it.”
When Ogarek’s students were grieving her loss, Thyer was there for them. Throughout their conversations, three common themes were apparent: the kids loved Ogarek, they loved her class and they loved the recent workshop they had the opportunity to attend.
“We had this committee of students that wanted to do something for Mary who was the driving force behind (Voice of Witness),” she said. “So another colleague (Chris Wendelin) and I put this class together and our principal and superintendent were wonderful. They told us ‘whatever you need, we trust you.'”
One of the fruits of their labor was the publication of “111th & Roberts: Where Our Stories Intersect,” a book of stories from across their school community that feature the personal reflection of Stagg students on the oral history process.
“When Mary was sick and passed, what people did was told stories and we as a school collectively stopped for that minute and saw each other as people and not as administrators and staff,” Thyer said. “Empowering our students might sound cheesy, but seeing them take the lead on something and get involved in something and how they conduct themselves and how they do the interview and handle these things, it’s made me motivated to be more involved to make these things more available to our students. It embodies so much that is good about school and is really positive and is so much what Mary believed in as a teacher too.”
Thyer’s students are excited to learn in her classes. She asks her American literature students, “What does it mean to be an American?” in a class of the same name. Students are challenged to compare and contrast various literary works from different historical time periods and in doing so can better identify the core values of American culture that were emphasized at those different times.
Golden Apple winners will be surprised in the spring and collect spring sabbaticals from Northwestern University, $5,000 in cash and become Fellows of the Golden Apple Academy of Educators.
Winners are already in their classrooms, and for Lusby-Brown and Thyer, that’s the top prize.
C.R. Walker is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.