JEAN SCHWENDAU IS AP TEACHER OF THE YEAR!!!
Jean Schwendau’s AP Biology class at North High School files in at 9:00 AM on a Friday morning. She is a veteran teacher in her 30th year, the last 13 of them at North. She grew up in Louisville, Kentucky. A different place at a different time. The faces of her students reflect the wide-ranging demographics at North. The school mascot is a Polar Bear at a school that’s not very white.
Schwendau makes a good poster teacher for the explosion of AP course offerings at DMPS high schools in recent years. Twenty-five years into her career she made herself a student again to equip herself to better challenge her students and prepare them for the realities of 21st century post-secondary education. She didn’t do it to fatten her paycheck. She did it to fatten the eventual paychecks her students will earn.
Schwendau stops one girl to ask ask if she’ll be staying after school for a make-up exam. The girl wants to but if she misses her ride she’ll have no way home.
“What if I give you a ride home?” Schwendau asks. “Then will you stay?” The girl smiles and agrees.
On the whiteboard at the front of the room the following is written: Objective – I can discuss the processes that control the expression of genes.
Schwendau opens class with a bashful explanation for the presence of a camera crew.
“Mrs. Graeber (DMPS AP Coordinator Amber) nominated me for an award and I won!” she says. It sounds like a confession. The class applauds. “So the quiz next Monday will be moved to Wednesday. I have to go to Chicago.”
The trip is to accept her award as the College Board’s AP Teacher of the Year for the 13-state Midwest region comprised of Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, West Virginia and Wisconsin.
Then the class gets down to the business of constructing models of operons using beads and pipe cleaners and Play-Doh. Room #1432 is punctuated with a series of tri-stationed lab sinks that stand like fountains in a town square. Schwendau slaloms around them, stopping at desk after desk to work with students up close and hand-to-hand. At the back of the room, waiting their turn, one pair hums while they work, like the heat register along the wall and the class in general.
Mattie Rodgers is a senior who thought she’d like to take AP Bio until she got a taste of it. “I was going to drop it during 1st semester,” she said. “I just couldn’t get it. I went to my counselor who said I’d have to talk to Mrs. Schwendau before I could drop.” So she did. “She said she couldn’t stop me but she strongly encouraged me to hang in there. She said she’d help me. I took her advice and now I am loving it. My scores are way up.”
There is the misconception in some quarters that the district’s dramatic AP expansion has been accomplished by dumbing down the course contents. Not so.
“The kids are trusting us when we insist that a hard-earned ‘C’ in AP is better preparation than a lazy ‘A’ in a regular track,” Schwendau said. “Our students are steadily rising to the challenge. I have former students away at college now who contact me to say thank you for getting them ready. You don’t have to score a 4 or a 5 on an AP exam for the AP experience to be worthwhile.”
Not surprisingly, North Principal Mike Vukovich is glad that Schwendau is on his team.
“Humility is my favorite trait of Jean’s,” Vukovich said. “Truly, it’s all about the kids for her. She is phenomenal. Here she was, a veteran teacher when we started the AP ramp-up several years ago and she became a student again, without hesitation, for the sake of her students.”
“It’s really true with kids that they have to ‘know that you care before they care what you know,’” Schwendau said. “We owe these kids here at North the same level of challenge as anyplace else because what that actually means is the same level of opportunity.”
There is no textbook definition of a good teacher. But you can quickly see it and feel it when you’re in one’s classroom. Room 1432 at North has that feel to it. It’s tough to briefly discuss the processes that control the expression of Jean. But listen to someone who has known her long and well enough to support her like the AP Midwest Region Teacher of the Year does her students.
This an excerpt from Amber Graeber’s nomination of Schwendau for the award she’s receiving today in Chicago, 350 miles away from the science lab where she practices the absolute art of teaching at an absolutely advanced level. It’s followed by a link to the entire letter. Read it and, especially if someone you care about is one of Schwendau’s lucky students, be glad she teaches here: “You see, Jean’s story isn’t one of the highest AP exam average or the largest AP program. Jean’s story is one of resilience. Jean’s story is one of hope. All students deserve an opportunity to take rigorous coursework, and all students deserve a teacher like Jean.” (Click here to read the entire nomination.)