Everyday Heroics Earn Teacher Some Recognition

By Eliza Hallabeck

A familiar Newtown name was among a national list of teachers chosen as semifinalists in the American Federation of Teachers’ Everyday Hero program this week, and being named as an Everyday Hero in the final round of the contest will depend on votes from the public.

“The teachers are heroes, period,” said Reed Intermediate School fifth grade teacher Karen King. “I’m just one of a crowd.”

When she first got the call from the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) announcing her selection as a semifinalist, Ms King almost hung up. She was unaware a conversation she had a few months earlier with fellow Reed Intermediate School teacher Jill Beaudry was an interview of sorts. Ms Beaudry went on to use that conversation as the basis for her nomination letter for Ms King in the Everyday Hero program.

Ms King thought the conversation was about her current after school hours project — raising funding to build an eye clinic in Liberia. She eagerly began explaining the program to Ms Beaudry, thinking her colleague was interested in helping the cause. Ms Beaudry then shared the news with the AFT.

The Liberia project circles back to Ms King’s classroom, where a school-to-school program between Reed Intermediate School and a school in Ghana began with Ms King meeting Newtown native Jennifer Staple, the founder of the Newtown-based Unite for Sight organization.

Although Ms King’s current project does not involve her work as a teacher, she is hoping one day, with help from fundraising, it will.

Newtown’s Response

News about Ms King’s semifinalist status was shared with Newtown teachers on Monday through an e-mail by Newtown Federation of Teachers President Ron Chivinski.

“The NFT is honored to have one of our own recognized as an Everyday Hero by the American Federation of Teachers,” he wrote. “Karen King, a fifth grade teacher at Reed Intermediate School, is a semifinalist in this annual contest.”

Voting opened on February 14 and runs through February 26. Mr Chivinksi’s e-mail ended by asking everyone to support “our very own Everyday Hero” by clicking a link to vote for Ms King. (You may vote for Ms King at www.aft.org/everydayheroes/index.cfm.)

The semifinalist who gets the most votes in each division will be named as that division’s 2011 Everyday Hero, and will be honored at the AFT divisional conference in the spring, according to the AFT. Other nominated teachers in Ms King’s division are Hope Evantoff of Providence, R.I., Martha Hanley of Wayne, N.Y., Andrea Harrison of Sleepy Hollow, N.Y., and Sharon Wingfield of Chicago.

Reed fifth grade teacher Dina Mastroni responded to the news of Ms King’s semifinalist status with an e-mail saying, “Way to go Karen! You are really something special! I already voted!”

Reed Intermediate School Principal Sharon Epple said she really was not surprised to learn Ms King is being honored as an AFT Everyday Hero nominee.

“She is known for building a community of learners well beyond academics. She teaches her students, and all of us at Reed, to reach beyond our walls to help others,” said Dr Epple. “She has set up interested students to volunteer in our Project Succeed program, working with the medically fragile students we have at Reed. She coordinates the Rice Project online with her students. She works tirelessly and always cheerfully for Dorothy Day House. Karen’s compassion is phenomenal and contagious. She’s just a tremendous role model for all of us.”

While Dr Epple said the Newtown Public School system is lucky to have Ms King working in the district, Ms King said she is lucky to work at a school like Reed.

“I love my job, I think of myself as the luckiest person on the planet,” Ms King said.

And Ms King has been to other schools on the planet. She says Reed is the best school she’s visited.

“People forget the heroes that teachers are every single day,” said Ms King. “You don’t have to go to Africa or Haiti to be a hero. I know that, because I see it everyday.”

Other e-mailed teacher responses in the district included Reed art teacher Sue Ward saying, “Congratulations Karen! We here at Reed knew you to be a hero all along.”

Reed sixth grade teacher Janet McCabe wrote, “You are truly an inspiration to us all.”

Inspiration And Service

Jill Beaudry said after she learned about the AFT Everyday Hero contest, she nominated Ms King in October.

“When I saw [the article on the AFT contest] I immediately thought of Karen,” said Ms Beaudry, a fellow Reed fifth grade teacher and good friend of Ms King. “She just does so much community outreach. In fact, I really admire her for it.”

According to the AFT, an Everyday Hero “epitomize[s] the spirit of public service and inspire[s] us all to go the extra mile in our chosen fields and in our communities.”

During a trip to the Dorothy Day House in Danbury in January of last year, Girl Scout Troop 820 joined the list of multiple student groups who have learned about the hospitality house from Ms King, a frequent volunteer.

At least two of Ms King’s then current and former students were on the trip, Ally Hotchkiss and Kelly Daly, and both girls said Ms King’s shared stories in the classroom made them want to bring the troop to visit the hospitality house in Danbury.

Other students over the years have also named Ms King as an inspiration in The Bee’s pages included Sage DeSimone, who as an 11-year-old held a bake sale last February to raise funds to help Haiti recover from the earthquake just the month before. Sage in turn inspired Newtown brothers Nathan and Joshua Malota, who gathered goods from around Newtown to sell during a tag sale, to raise funds for Haiti last April.

Helping People See

More recently, Ms King has been making her way to Rotary and Lions Club meetings and sharing the word as much as she can about Unite For Sight’s effort to build an eye clinic in Liberia.

Helping people see has been a project for Ms King in the past.

During a trip to Haiti, years back, Ms King said, she was volunteering in classrooms and helping teachers who had no access to glasses, let alone other corrective vision treatments. The teachers stood in front of classrooms with between 50 to 60 students in them each, Ms King said, and the teachers could not see the board.

“I had to figure out a way to get teachers in Haiti glasses,” said Ms King. She began looking online for any and every organization that could help her. “And [Jennifer Staple with Unite For Sight] was one of the only people who got back to me.”

While Unite For Sight had no efforts in Haiti at the time, the coincidence of both Ms Staple and Ms King being from Newtown was too much to pass up. Ms Staple contacted Ms King a few weeks later regarding Unite For Sight’s ongoing efforts in Ghana.

From there, as Ms King explained it, everything started.

“That just led me on this big journey to this school in Ghana,” she said.

Eventually Ms King brought the school in Ghana home for her students in Newtown with an “eye-to-eye” pen pal program.

The school, and really the town, got involved with the school in Ghana through the Unite For Sight program, according to Ms King. When the camp where the pen pals lived closed, Reed raised money for their friends, now in Liberia.

“We actually paid for the school to exist for two years in Liberia with the money we raised,” said Ms King.

Ms King took a hiatus from the project for a while, because there was little her efforts could do to further the cause.

Then she was contacted by two of the ophthalmic nurses, Robert Dolo and Kartee Karloweh, she had come to know through volunteering with Unite For Sight. While the nurses had worked at the Ghana Unite For Sight location, both had since returned home to Liberia and were work on building a new Unite For Sight location to bring people in Liberia glasses.

To complete the project, Ms King needs to raise $82,000.

Until students are involved at the Unite for Sight location, no pen pals can be set up, and, because of this, Ms King said she has had to keep her new project out of the classroom.

Ms King is now hoping local groups; a private donor, who has pledged to give $15,000 to the cause if two local groups give $30,000 each; and people from around the state will help raise the money needed to bring sight to Liberia.

“If we are able to create this out of nothing, this will mean that people in Liberia will be able to see,” she said. “That’s vision we can see.”

Speaking of the Rotary Club, Ms King said, “Want to talk about heroes?”

Newtown Rotarian Brian Amey, Ms King says, worked for hours to write up a grant to give Unite For Sight $30,000 for the Liberian location. When he handed the paperwork in, he told Ms King to find the support within the Rotary’s different local groups. So, Ms King has been traveling, making speeches before Connecticut Rotaries in support of Unite For Sight’s endeavor to build a location in Liberia, in order to earn the grant.

Once the clinic is open, Unite for Sight can set up the clinic, and then pen pals can be arranged, “and I can get back to what I know.”

Jokingly, Ms King said God must know about someone in Liberia in desperate need of glasses, because the road to Ms King being involved in the effort has been filled with coincidences.

“Someday somebody in Liberia will be able to see,” she said.

For more information on the Unite For Sight’s Liberian effort or to donate to the cause, contact Ms King at Reed by e-mailing kingk@newtown.k12.ct.us or calling 203-270-4880.