Congratulations Mrs. Maruscak, our middle school Science teacher. She is one of the winners of the FICE (The Foundation for Inclusive Catholic Education) 2023 Inclusive Teacher of the Year Award.
The Foundation for Inclusive Catholic Education supports families, educators and schools with the advocacy, knowledge and resources necessary to help students with special needs experience the spiritual and academic richness of a Catholic Education in an inclusive environment.
All of the nominees were recognized at a celebration brunch on March 25th.
Getting to know Eileen has been an adventure in itself and I think everyone would agree if you know Eileen. She possesses character traits that we would hope all teachers have when they teach. She teaches from the heart. When speaking with Eileen she remembers back as a freshman in high school wanting to be a teacher. She had babysitting jobs on the weekends and absolutely loved the money! Eileen’s mom actually had her youngest brother when she was a freshman and she was in her glory! She loved being her brother’s second mommy. Right beside her mother she watched her brother, take his very first steps, speak his first
words, graduate from grammar school, and high school. Eileen said she can remember his first girlfriends, his first time he drove, and if I let her I probably could’ve heard so much more, it was like Eileen was the mom too. She loved working with children and knew she had to choose a career that worked with children.
When asking Eileen what was her inspiration to get into teaching, she talked about what she remembered as a child and what bothered her about school. Mathematics is what Eileen remembers most about school and how much she hated math. She hated it because she struggled with it and nobody ever tried to help her understand it. Instead She remembers how hard she would study to no avail and disappoint everyone with her failing grades. She can even remember there being two different groups for reading, math, and social studies. There was the A group and the B group of students grouped according to ability. She was placed in the B group and she remembers feeling so awful about not being in the top group. Not only was she not in the top group, she was the only girl in the group full of boys! I was the only girl in a group full of boys. You want to talk about bringing a girl’s confidence and self esteem down, that was Eileen. You could hear it in Eileen’s voice that to this day it still really bothered her how she felt.
It wasn’t until High school that Eileen finally had a math teacher that understood what Eileen struggled with. This teacher used so many different methods and taught me like no other teacher taught her before to be sure she understood the concepts. Eventually, she was able to pass her Regents and get her GPA up. The story gets crazier, this teacher ended up at the same college that Eileen went to as well. This dedicated teacher helped Eileen in college and helped her get through all the classes she needed at college. This man will forever be remembered for what he did for her.
When asking Eileen why she thinks she connects to the students so well here is her response, “ My approach in presenting concepts is “hands-on”. I am always thinking back to how I was taught, and I only remember reading and not understanding what I read and taking notes about what I did not understand. When I present science content to my students, I take into account their learning style so that I can modify or challenge them. I only wish that was done for me when I was struggling with math during grammar school. I know that having math manipulatives to figure problems out on my own would have been a great help to me. I’m sure that if my teachers back then could have shown me a variety of ways to learn math, I would not despise so much now, as an adult.
This man is the reason she is who she is today. She does not give up on children, she does not believe that they are not capable of learning, she believes that all children can do it, they just have to be shown. They have to be guided to take the path that they struggle on. We need all teachers to be like Eileen. She is incredible and I have watched her work with students. Eileen protects students and takes them “under her wing” and makes sure they know she is there for them!