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Richard Peloquin Sally Rosholt Jan Ruhl Bonnie Whiting
It was not long
into his tenure at GM that students and
colleagues alike began to realize the awesome wealth of knowledge of
history
that Rich Peloquin possesses and utilizes in his teaching.
His students have long been known to declare
that no human can possibly retain as much historical data as does Mr.
Peloquin. He punctuates his teaching
with historical anecdotes that stay with students not only through
their final examinations
but on into future years. And whether it
is because of an anecdote he’s shared or perhaps via one of his
all-too-frequent puns or jokes (aside:
about half of them are groaners, Rich!),
Mr. Peloquin’s
students finish his courses having learned a tremendous amount about
history
and government. As one
student recalled after his first year in college: I
remember getting my rough drafts back from Mr. Peloquin on which he
wrote more
words of review than I did in the papers themselves. He
inserted comments, usually in the form of questions I did not know the
answers
to and thus I had to go back and do further research.
And that same student knew the importance
of doing that extra research because he understood the intent of his
teacher
for, as he himself said: Mr.
Peloquin could always answer any
question he could ask! Rich is also an
accomplished chess player who has shared his
passion for the game since the day he arrived at George Mason. A champion in his own
right, he invites a trailerful of kids to
hone their
skills on Friday afternoons. The
GM chess ladder boasts many names, some of whom are students who might
not be
involved in many other school activities.
But they’ve caught Rich’s passion for chess and they
regularly come to
his trailer to play. Rich is known and
respected for his uncompromising stance
when it comes to academic integrity and personal responsibility. He holds his students to those high standards
and they seldom disappoint him in striving for and attaining them. Rich has always
taken great pride in wearing each senior
class’s graduation t-shirt. It is his
way of supporting the class and showing them his respect for what
they’ve
accomplished. His doing this is
something students have noted over the years and for which they’ve
expressed
their appreciation. Rich, we will very
much miss you here at George Mason where
your contributions have been significant.
In your classroom this morning, even in the eleventh hour
of your
teaching career, I watched as you taught Congressman Jim Moran a thing
or two
about the history of the US Congress.
Your students were impressed, I was impressed and
Congressman Moran was
impressed! I don’t know what you have
planned next but I will keep my ears open and listen, perhaps, of news
of a
retired history teacher taking on Bobby Fischer in a chess tournament
in On BARBARA MORRIS
Let’s consider for
a moment what And it’s not just
Barbara’s adeptness at teaching all levels
of math that makes her so valuable and versatile; it’s her amazing
ability to
handle an excessive number of class preps.
In her first year here Barbara inherited a schedule that
looked like
this: Prep # 1: 8th
grade algebra Prep # 2:
pre-calculus Prep # 3: advanced
algebra II Prep # 4: IB HL math Preps # 5, # 6 and
# 7:
regular computer science; IB standard level computer
science and IB
higher level computer science all in the same classroom! Only a handful of
Spanish and French teachers at GM have
ever had that kind of course load with so many preps.
But there was never a peep of complaint out
of Barbara. Barbara just
doesn’t whine about things. Not even
the year she had 36 students in her
algebra class did she protest. And that
class met in a windowless room in the bowels of the building. Perhaps what most
captivates students and colleagues of
Barbara is her intelligence. Her
students see her as a brilliant lady who has much to impart to them. How she shares that brilliance—how she
teaches—is most impressive. She is a
highly successful coach working with athletes: she shows them how to do
it, then gets the very best out of them. Barbara, too, is a
linguist and her other language is French
which she taught in Beyond her
successful teaching career in
And Barbara has
probably taught us all more than anyone else
we’ve had the pleasure to work with about how to roll with life’s
punches. Her humor, determination and
sense of purpose
are character traits she shows us all each day.
She has been a member of the all-important GMHS Sunshine
Committee since
its founding. And that fact alone speaks
volumes about Barbara: when it
comes to doing, it’s doing for
others that matters most. We are indebted to
you, Barbara, for your many years of exceptional
service to our profession and we feel privileged that the students of
George
Mason have been the beneficiaries of your talents for nearly 16 years. Barbara, the staff
wanted to come up with a world shattering
proof to name after you but Wiles stole the Fermat thing before we got
to it
and then Tim messed up our other one because he didn’t carry the 2
properly on
page 35 so the whole thing had to be trashed.
I’m sorry. That said, may all
your proofs be elegant and all your
problems solved. On SALLY ROSHOLT Walking a little
further back in time, I take you to May of
1988 when Sally Rosholt arrived in the George Mason HS office. Sally served briefly as a front office
secretary filling in for Dorothy Clinton who was on maternity leave. In July she became secretary to the guidance
counselors and began a 17-year run on the GM staff. In the guidance
office Sally
did everything you’d expect of a secretary plus a few other things: she handled all the arrangements for the
school’s
field trips and entered every student’s grades each quarter—by
hand.
Later she ushered in Sally was a
perfect fit for the counseling office because
her personality featured exactly what one would want to find in such a
place: friendliness, compassion,
understanding, and even a certain maternal protectiveness.
These were qualities Sally had in abundance
and they were always in evidence to students, staff and parents. Sally was the public face of the guidance
department for 6 school years. One has to wonder
how a woman of such friendliness,
compassion, understanding and maternal protectiveness could ever be
crazy
enough to think she could then be an effective school finance secretary. After all, this position requires surliness,
impatience,
and the ability to hurl a nasty scowl at anyone who would presume to
request a
box of paper clips or a #2 pencil. But no. Sally
Rosholt
proved quickly that the cheerful demeanor she brought to the guidance
office
transferred very nicely to the school’s business office.
And even though there have been times when
I’ve had to edit some of Sally’s letters or faxes—just to express greater indignation to an uncooperative
vendor, for example—she has continued to treat every student, teacher,
parent,
phone caller and visitor with the same courtesy and kind respect she
was known
for in 1988. Now that may not
sound like such a task—just being kind and
courteous—until you consider what it is Sally is required to accomplish
and put
up with on a daily basis. She has a
steady stream of customers: mostly staff
members in need of materials, forms, purchase orders, checks, postage,
status
of placed orders, and information on returned orders; then there are
the students
who stop in to pay fees, report quarters lost in vending machines,
settle fines
and get change of a $10 bill. Her phone
rings off the hook and she’s immediately responsive to every delivery
person
from FedEx, DHL or UPS, all of whom come at least once a day. And these are just the distractions. Then there’s
the actual job itself: Sally has worked
tirelessly to cobble together annual school
budgets for each of the last 11 years.
That is a time consuming process involving administrators,
department
and team leaders, program directors and central office business
department
staff. The budget building process lasts
for a couple of months initially each fall and then requires additional
weeks
of adjustments. Throughout budget season
and on each day of the year, deliveries continue to arrive and the
other
distractions don’t abate. Purchase
orders must be generated, accounts must be reconciled, checks must be
written, activities
receipts and gate receipts must be counted and deposited, and a small
mountain
of mail must be handled daily. Correspondence
with hundreds of vendors
continues. In
the course of a single year Sally Rosholt
is responsible for nearly 100 internal accounts—most of them associated
with
clubs and organizations. The intake and
disbursement of internal funds alone run into the hundreds of thousands
of
dollars annually. In her eleven years as finance secretary for GM,
Sally has
prepared many thousands of purchase orders for presentation to the
central
office for the disbursement of nearly $12,000,000 in school board funds
for the
operating budget of GM. At one time or another the collection
and expenditure of funds for which Sally is solely responsible will
connect her
to every single GM student and nearly every single staff member. She will have dealt directly with the parent
or guardian of virtually every single student—most of them on multiple
occasions. When one considers the
frequency of contacts with staff, students and parents that Sally has,
it’s
remarkable that she has maintained that same guidance secretary
demeanor! But
equally remarkable is the record Sally holds for eleven straight years
of
passing school audits with flying colors.
And as building principal that is what I’m most thankful
for because, as
I told her the day she took on the job, Sally
is all that stands between me and jail! On JAN RUHL It is difficult to
believe that Jan Ruhl started teaching at
George Mason 31 years ago. It’s easier
to believe when you consider she was only 12 at the time!
We
tease Jan about her youthful appearance but it’s only because we’re all
envious.
There is much about Jan Ruhl’s
career that
really is enviable. And
young teachers coming into the profession
today could learn enormously important lessons from it.
What they would learn is what a model professional
educator looks and behaves like in the school
setting. Jan began guiding
young people at George Mason in 1974 when
she came to work as a business education teacher and to serve as the
work-study
and job placement coordinator for Falls Church City Public Schools. In those early days of her tenure here Jan
set a standard for her students in the classroom which she expected
them to
replicate in the workplace: professional
dress, professional behavior,
professional procedures, and a professional product.
She was demanding of her students and treated them always
with the
utmost respect—something they could at least hope
would be their experiences in the real world after leaving her
classes and George Mason. Throughout
Jan’s career she has been uncompromising on this whether she was
teaching
keyboarding skills to middle school students or accounting and business
law
practices to second semester seniors.
She takes her subject matter seriously and she delivers it
in the most
professional of ways. Jan’s service in
the FCCPS has come in two different phases
and there are very few of us left today who knew her in her first
life (1974-81) as well as in her second life
(1991-2005). I was fortunate enough to
have my first year
coincide with the last year of Jan’s first
life here at GM. I recall being
impressed by her friendliness and kindness.
I had little opportunity to learn then what she was like
in the
classroom. What I remember most was the
excitement among veteran teachers upon her return to GM after a 10-year
hiatus. She was greeted like a returning
war hero and I recall her being equally friendly and attentive to those
she’d
never worked with as she was to her former pals. I
was impressed by that and it told me a lot
about the character of this colleague of mine. Over the most
recent 14 years that Jan has worked with us at
GM, she has continued to impress new teachers and veterans alike. Jan is known as a deeply compassionate human
being who carries her compassion into all of her dealings with students. She is kind, possessed of a good sense of
humor, is able to laugh at herself, and knows not to take some things
too
seriously. (That may well be
the secret of her youth!.)
Jan is one to take an interest in her
colleagues, especially where she senses that she can be of any kind of
help. She displays that same attitude
toward her students and is often most concerned about the students who
seem to
have few other adults who care enough about them. It is in understanding the detail
of Jan’s work at GM and in the FCCPS that one grows to appreciate the
job she’s
done and the difficulty it often entails.
As CIRT for the Career and Technology Education program,
Jan is expected
to be thoroughly knowledgeable of a wide range of programs offered at
GM, at
the Jan, as you retire
from your two careers here at George
Mason, you go with our affection and thanks for a job well done—both times! We will
miss you as a colleague and as an
elegant but forceful advocate for students.
It is our hope that whoever follows in your footsteps will
be the same,
tireless advocate for CTE programming and the students who pursue it. We hope that person will take on all
professional duties with the same enthusiasm and good cheer that you
have for
all these years. And we sure hope
that
those state reports will somehow get done in the same impeccably
accurate and
complete fashion that they always have under your hand.
Thanks, Jan, for 21 years of highly
professional service to many hundreds of students at George Mason! On BONNIE WHITING
When
it came to keeping up with all the changes in SASI or
the proper maintenance and handling of student records—a rather
considerable
legal matter for public schools, to be sure—Bonnie often served as
private
tutor to many school administrators and counselors who were pulling
their hair
out with state reports and codes and all that state mumbo
jumbo. Fortunately for us, Bonnie speaks fluent state mumbo jumbo!!! She
could explain and demonstrate things to the most thickheaded among us
in calm
and rational ways because she had the patience of an expert teacher. And
while the realm of Bonnie’s work was
always vast, touching every single
employee and every single student in one way or another, what was most
impressive
and remarkable about her enduring reign in information technology was
her
equally enduring work ethic. Simply put,
Bonnie is one of the most no-nonsense, dedicated, methodical,
hardworking,
responsible, accurate and efficient employees the FCCPS has ever seen. Bonnie is also very insightful and quick
on
the uptake. She has an uncanny ability
to see things coming, accurately warn others about them and then take
whatever
preparations are needed to handle what’s coming…even if others do not. Our colleague,
Hunter Kimble, lamented to me
the other day that one simply cannot pull the wool over Bonnie’s
eyes. He recalls many a time going to Bonnie’s door and saying:
Bonnie, you know how you told me
to do such and such a thing? Well, I
didn’t do it the way you told me to and now I really need your
help! (Now those of us who know
Bonnie well can picture her on those occasions muttering a
wholly-deserved comment or two under her breath as she rises to go and
straighten Hunter and the difficulty
out. And it’s not
just Hunter who’s been there—it’s just that he’s the only one who gave
me
permission to talk about him in this speech!) As so many of us
have observed over the years, Bonnie always
sees the big picture. And
I really mean the BIG PICTURE! Her
radar is
always operating and she gathers and integrates data better than most
of us
ever will. That allows her to be an
extremely creative problem solver. But
the flip side of that is that she is also adept at seeing what or who
is the problem. And it’s best not to be
the problem because Bonnie does not suffer fools gladly!
Nor should she! The fact is
that Bonnie can be one of the
strongest players on your team if you’re smart enough to let her do
some play
calling. And speaking of
play calling, let’s consider another aspect
of Bonnie Whiting that would occasionally show itself in the workplace: she’s a big sports fan and an absolutely
rabid one when it comes to Hokie
football and NCAA March Madness. She makes
road trips to Blacksburg each fall
but only after thoroughly checking
the calendar and working late evenings or weekends in advance in order
not to cause
one shred of extra work for any of her colleagues.
And many of us remember Bonnie as the
inventor of the GM NCAA basketball tournament pool.
That pool generated lots of cash winnings
due to multiple entries including at least two
from each member of Bonnie’s family. In the 1980s when the principal voiced some
concern over the gambling going on in the faculty room, we all
conspired to protect
Bonnie by blaming her cousin, Jim Spirodopoulos,
but
nothing ever did come of that since the big winner that year—and many
years
thereafter—was fellow principal Nancy Sprague!
Between Bonnie’s and Nancy’s
expert picks the
rest of us didn’t stand a chance! Bonnie, we thank
you for your consistently excellent, thorough
and vitally important work for George Mason and for the FCCPS. You richly deserve your retirement. We wish you lots of wonderful years with
Ronnie, Ted & Eileen, and Stacey & Jayson and lots of great
times in
Houston with your grandbabies, Amber and Zack.
We wish you lots of Hokie
victories—though now
that they’re in the ACC some of us may be less enthused about that
prospect! And whether your roads lead you
to Texas,
Blacksburg or an Aerosmith or a Bob Seger concert, may they be smooth, straight and
completely
free of snow! Thank you, Bonnie!
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