April 23, 2013
By Sylvia Ramirez
An Oakland teacher was honored by President Obama at a White House ceremony on Tuesday.
I’Asha Warfield is a 7th grade English teacher at Oakland’s Frick Middle School. She is California’s only nominee for the 2013 National Teacher of the Year Award.
“It is my aim that students are able to use their life experiences and connect them to the world through analysis and evaluation. Simultaneously, I hope that with the skills they develop they are able to look beyond their own experience to critically and creatively engage in this world,” Warfield wrote in her application.
Warfield has taught English and reading intervention, and world history at Frick Middle School since 2000. She also works as a coach in the Beginning Teacher Support and Assessment program to help guide new teachers through their self-assessment process in order to clear their California credential.
Warfield serves as a representative in Frick’s Instructional Leadership Team to help assess the instructional needs of the school through data analysis and teacher feedback. She also works as a consultant to the Bay Area Writing Project that presents teacher trainings on secondary literacy with an emphasis on writing.
Prior experience for Warfield includes working as a consultant with the California Reading and Literature Project; a corps member advisor at Teach for America Summer Institute; a collaborating teacher at the University of California, Berkeley and Mills College; and an assistant language teacher with the Japanese Exchange Teaching Programme, Miyagi, Japan.
The Oakland teacher and other nominated teachers from around the country applauded when Jeff Charbonneau, a high school science teacher from Zillah, Washington, was awarded the National Teacher of the Year by the president.
Charbonneau teaches chemistry, physics and engineering at Zillah High School, all subjects he knows many students look at as the “hard” science classes. He is also founder and director of the award-winning Zillah Robot Challenge, which is open to students and schools across the state and is designed to help students gain confidence in addressing science and engineering concepts.
A National Board Certified teacher, Charbonneau has been teaching for 12 years. He has a bachelor’s degree in biology and a master’s degree in education from Central Washington University.
He is the 63rd National Teacher of the Year, a contest sponsored by the Council of Chief State School Officers. The winner, chosen by a committee of representatives from 15 education organizations, is pulled from the cohort of State Teachers of the Year, who themselves are selected through different processes in various states.