Three local teachers, two of them classroom veterans and another who entered public education more recently, have been selected as finalists in the 2008 Alachua County Teacher Recognition program.

Petrina Leggon, Jane McMullen and Janine Plavac were selected by a group of previous Alachua County teachers of the year as the finalists for this year’s program in the elementary, middle and high school categories. In just a few weeks, one of them will be selected as the district’s overall Teacher of the Year and Alachua County’s representative to the statewide Teacher of the Year program.

Leggon is in her ninth year as a teacher at Williams Elementary School, where she teaches a multi-age classroom of first- and second-graders. With her trusty puppet Wally often helping with her lessons, Leggon says that working with children and encouraging them to be the best they can be makes her very happy.

“I want to inspire children to learn,” she said. “I feel like I’m contributing to the world by encouraging students to be lifelong learners and to believe that they can be somebody.”

McMullen works with special needs students at Kanapaha Middle School. She’s been an exceptional education teacher for more than thirty years, and says she wants her students to know that they can learn and that they have the capacity to do something important with their lives.

“Every day we’re learning new things,” she said. “I want the students to recognize that when you’re learning it gives you new ideas about what you want to do, how to live in the world and how to relate to other people.”

Although Janine Plavac has been teaching in a school classroom for less than five years, she says that educating others was a big part of her job as a nurse, which was her profession for more than 30 years. Now she is sharing her expertise and experiences with students in Gainesville High School’s Academy of Health Professions. 

“I want them to be the best health care professionals they can possibly be,” she said. “If I can give them my compassion and my passion and my desire to succeed in this field, then I’ve accomplished my job.”

Leggon, McMullen, Plavac and thirty-eight other teachers chosen as Teachers of the Year from each of Alachua County’s schools will be honored at the sixteenth annual Robert W. Hughes Teacher Recognition Program reception in early February. Hughes is the former Alachua County school superintendent who established the recognition program back in 1992. The teacher selected as Alachua County’s Teacher of the Year will go on to represent Alachua County in the Florida Department of Education-Macy’s Teacher of the Year Program. The statewide Teacher of the Year will be announced in July.

A committee of local business leaders is currently raising funds for awards for all of Alachua County’s Teachers of the Year. Anyone interested in contributing to the recognition program can contact the district’s Public Information Office at (352) 955-7253, ext. 228.