Teacher of the Year

Only two years ago, teachers at Marathon High felt strongly about nominating Janet Meinke as their teacher of the year for the consistently strong leadership and instructional program that she provides in the field of mathematics. Two years later, she once again has been chosen by the faculty for her continued efforts on behalf of our students and program out of a field of 45 teachers. Janet Meinke truly represents the ideal teacher and has again been recognized by her peers for this great honor as Teacher of the Year.

Janet does it all. She leads both the M.H.S. math department as well as provides district math leadership in her role as district-wide math teacher leader. Through her efforts, a rigorous and comprehensive district math curriculum was created over the summer and put in place this year. In addition, she was instrumental in the creation of monthly math measurement tools for use district wide to gage student progress periodically throughout the year as well as at the end of each quarter toward the Sunshine State Standards in their math coursework. Her leadership in this area has been of great support to the district staff and to math teachers throughout the county as well as to our own teachers.

Her leadership is not limited to the area of math. She also serves on our school building level planning team in making decisions critical to the success of our school improvement plan. She sets a high standard of behavior and work ethic as a model for us all.

Janet provides diligent support for our new math teachers as well. This year, following the resignation of a teacher in September, Janet spent the next month writing lesson plans, testing, and grading students and communicating with concerned parents to support the substitutes that were in the class until the position was filled.  She took almost full responsibility for these additional classes during this time, working actively to see that the students would not fall behind in addition to her own full set of classes.

Janet has taken on the challenges of the full range of math courses including both our AP math classes as well as intense math. She sought out the assignment for the intense math class to better understand the challenges faced by the other math teachers with this new assignment. The first hand knowledge she gained through teaching and participation in training has helped us to define our curriculum and better serve our students.  She has also been instrumental in providing math department leadership including analyzing test data, supporting new text materials, and support for Pinnacle.

Janet has been honored as a National Board Certified teacher, the first to make this achievement at our school. Through her encouragement, several more teachers have come forward to work toward this designation. Janet is selfless with her time, providing hands on help and encouragement to any teacher in need.

Janet has also served as Mu Alpha Theta sponsor and senior class advisor. In these roles, she works directly with students to motivate them toward exceptional achievement as well as to pass on a passion for her field, mathematics.

Janet is truly an exemplary teacher who positively impacts our math program at the school and district level. She is a teacher of teachers and through her dedication to students, the school, and the district, has made an enormous impact in our mathematics program. Students and teachers county-wide have been touched through the efforts of Marathon High teacher, Janet Meinke. She truly reflects all of the exemplary qualities of Teacher of the Year for Monroe County and would be an outstanding choice.

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School Teachers of the Year;    2002 |  2003  | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007

District Teacher of the Year:      2002 |  2003  | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007

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