Dugal Wins Local Teacher of Year Award
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| Heidi Dugal in a familiar pose — serving students. (Photo by Glenn Drohan) |
FLORIDA, Mass. — Heidi Dugal learned Wal-Mart representatives were coming to name her Local Teacher of the Year from Principal Gregory Betti about 15 minutes before the brief lunchtime ceremony at Gabriel Abbott Memorial School Tuesday — sandwiched in between classes and recess duty.
"I said, 'OK, but let me out of here because I have to go out for duty,'" Dugal said. "I'm not good at these sorts of things."
Less than five minutes after receiving her plaque, cutting and serving a celebratory cake and getting hugs from adoring students and admiring peers and staff, she was out on the school field organizing a kickball game. That's the way it is with Dugal, according to Betti and those who nominated her: The children always come first.
And she would rather be helping others than thinking about herself.
That's one of the reasons she won the award, which brought $1,000 and no small amount of prestige to this hilltown school of 120 students in grades pre-kindergarten to eight. She was selected from more than 50 teachers nominated in North Berkshire. Dugal not only teaches sixth grade (as well as eighth-grade science) but also serves as leader of the school's drama team, as basketball coach, ski club adviser, Student Council adviser, organizer of the Readathon and head of the community serving program. In her spare time, she does private tutoring and gardening — including stints planting the flowers along Main Street in North Adams.
"She teaches as she lives: Do what you can for who you can, with what you have," said Pat Burdick, a teacher's aide and parent who was among those who wrote letters of nomination for the award. "She always has her students try to be their best at everything," said sixth grader Bethanie Arigoni. "Ms. Dugal has all of her class participate in community activities to show us how much we really can help others."
That help has included serving food and cleaning up at the Florida Senior Center's annual Christmas party — including all the dishes, pots and pans — baking pies for the annual pie contest at the North Adams American Legion, assisting with its Be Our Guest Christmas Dinner, adopting a needy family through Northern Berkshire Community Action and putting on dances for the town's senior citizens. She naturally took the lead in keeping the community service program going, even though the school lost the funding for it three years ago.
Dugal has also been known, like other dedicated teachers, to spend her own money on needed supplies. Members of the school's Parent Teacher Group gave her a $100 gift certificate to Jae's Inn in North Adams in honor of her award, saying it was money she couldn't spend on students. The entire school applauded her Tuesday, and the ceremony drew North Berkshire School Union Superintendent Jay Barry from his busy schedule and brought back longtime Principal Fred Bozek from retirement for a day.
"Heidi was getting an award. I had to come," Bozek said.
Dugal said she believed she was always destined to become a teacher, although she first enrolled as a sociology major when she went to get her degree at North Adams State College as a non-traditional student back in the 1980s.
"I started off in sociology, but my mother was a teacher, and her mother was a teacher. I guess it was in the blood," Dugal said. She said she realized she wanted to teach while working at Drury High School as a teacher's aide to help foot college bills. "I said, 'I love doing this! I want to do this!' I got drawn in, and I guess it's the best thing I ever did."
She graduated from college in 1988 with degrees in sociology and elementary education and last year completed her master's in education at Cambridge College in Boston. She recalled wryly that her mother, the late Mary LeClaire, had taught her when she was in elementary school, as a substitute, after retiring from full-time work to raise her seven children.
"I said to my own children, I would never do that. I ended up teaching all of them," Dugal said.
One of her joys has been her own children's growth, she said: "Having them start searching for careers and admiring that I love what I do. I think when kids go off, they think about how much money they can make; they want to be rich. But they come to the realization that's not the most important thing you can do. It's what you do for others. It's that you love what you do. It's very easy for me to get up in the morning and go to work."
Her son Karl, 22, will graduate next week from Hobart & William Smith College in Geneva, N.Y., with a degree in economics. Clement, 20, is a sophomore at Boston University, majoring in political science, and Kenneth, 18, is a freshman at Berkshire Community College.
Dugal has been at Gabriel Abbott for 10 years and taught before that at Readsboro (Vt.) Central School and Savoy Elementary School. Betti, who worked in four school systems before replacing Bozek as principal last year, said he immediately recognized her talent and her passion for working with children.
"She is absolutely one of the top teachers I've ever had the pleasure of working with and watching," he said. "She is skilled in a myriad of methods of teaching and has the best communication with parents I've ever seen. She truly is a team player, and that's a tremendous compliment."
The Wal-Mart award was based on demanding criteria: The teacher of the year must get recommendations from parents, teachers and students. He or she must also demonstrate qualities that set them apart from others, especially "going above and beyond normal expectations."
Dugal easily qualified and was told she had won the award last month. "I was shocked," she said. She is now eligible for contests for state and national teacher of the year. But awards don't mean much to her. She'd rather just teach.
"It's the only job that every year and every day there's something new — to learn, to teach, to do," she said. "I'll be teaching here as long as they'll have me."
If her students, their parents, her peers and the administration have their way, that will be a long, long time.
Tags: teacher of the year,
