Pupils' essays help teacher win award

     By Sonya Padgett
     View staff writer
      Even though two first-graders made her cry last month, Mendoza Elementary School teacher Shelley Wise isn't holding it against them.
      In fact, she threw a pizza party for the culprits, along with their classmates, to celebrate what brought her to tears.
      Jasmine Secopito and Jessica Dewsnup, both 7, were finalists in an essay contest that named Wise the Clark County School District Teacher of the Year in May.
      "I certainly never had anything like this happen to me," Wise said. "It's really wonderful for the school."
      Dewsnup won the grand prize -- $500 each for Wise, Mendoza Elementary and herself -- in the contest that was also sponsored by local radio station KMZQ-FM (100.5).
      Wise also received round-trip tickets and accommodations for five days and four nights to anywhere National Airlines flies.
      Upon hearing the news that two of her pupils were among the 15 finalists chosen from more than 2,000 entrants, Wise reacted emotionally. She cried when she first read what her two pupils wrote about her, then jumped up and down, Secopito said.
      The pupils wrote stories explaining why they thought their teacher was the best.
      "I like her because she teaches us fun things in the classroom," Secopito wrote.
      Fun things including making pancakes and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in class.
      Both pupils named among their favorite activities book-making, writing and illustrating, three things Wise has pupils do to improve their reading and writing skills.
      In her essay, Dewsnup wrote how Wise spends a lot of her free time doing things for her pupils, such as calling them at home to help with homework, typing their stories and pasting them into covers to make books.
      "I love her and I know she loves me by the way she teaches," Dewsnup wrote. "I hope she can be my second-grade teacher."
      That just might happen.
      Thanks to a district policy called looping, which allows teachers to move on to another grade with a class if they're working on something unique, Wise and her 18 pupils possibly will move on to the second grade together.
      "This story writing we do is paying off for them," Wise said. "I'm hoping to go to second grade with them. I want to keep the journal writing, reading and publishing workshops up. The more you write the better you read, and the more you read the better you write. It's all interrelated."
      Wise taught for 19 years in her home state of New Jersey and for two years in Clark County. She left the profession and worked as a bank supervisor for three years before feeling the need to return to the classroom.
      Her passion for teaching is a big influence on her pupils; both Secopito and Dewsnup claim they want to teach when they grow up.
      "I want to be a teacher because it's fun," Secopito said.
      Added Dewsnup, "I want to be a teacher so I can help kids do their work."
      They'll have the chance to do both when they return to class after track break, as Wise already has an activity planned: blindfold sandwiches.
      The kids will read a book then make sandwiches wearing a blindfold.
      "Whatever you make you have to eat," Wise told the girls.