Admirable Bilingual Teacher at SJHS!

Shayla Tanner
SJHS Staff Writer

Springville Junior High’s outstanding teacher, Mary Rice, was awarded bilingual teacher of the year by Utah Association for Bilingual Education (UABE) on Friday, September 27. She has been teaching English as a Second Language (ESL) for six years in public schools. ESL is a class for students who are learning English as a second language.

Mary Rice was inspired to be a teacher for ESL for many reasons, “There are many roads that led to teaching and they all converged,” she explained. She had a lot of experiences with teachers who were really good to her. One of her teachers paid for her to participate in a law competition that she won. So she always thought of teachers as people who care about kids.

When she was in high school, she heard about a kid named Stefano from Italy who was in trouble in the counselor’s office, where she was a student aid. They were considering kicking him out because they thought he was becoming defiant. Afterwards she went to find him and talk to him about English. She found him some books that he liked in English and Italian that he could read, and she helped him with his homework and sat by him in class.

“Teaching is a one-way charitable relationship from teacher to student; you have to care about people that don’t have to care about you, you have to do things that you don’t think you should have to do,” Mary Rice said. She says that especially the ESL students are going to give back even though they owe you nothing. “They are going to want you to be there at important moments in their lives; when they get married, when they get jobs, when they advance in their religious training; they are going to serve you an extra ice cream when you go to Hogi Yogi where they are working their first job and always keep your water glass full at IHOP; they will write you kind notes and draw you pictures and sing you songs and offer to scoop the snow out of your driveway in the winter,” Mary Rice quoted.

She loves meeting families and visiting students and being recognized at the store or being asked to do important work like judging skate boarding competitions. She feels honored to have taught so many high quality people.

When her students found out that she was awarded teacher of the year by UABE, her students wanted to come to the dinner to honor her in Salt Lake. She was really touched when one of her students introduced her and he told the crowd that she was a person who could have done anything, but she choose to teach.