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the 2000 National Teacher of the Year, Marilyn Whirry is traveling
the country meeting students, teachers, business leaders, and elected
officials. This area is dedicated to keeping you in touch with Marilyn
as she goes from state to state and to giving Marilyn an opportunity to
share her experiences with her peers in the teaching community.
With 35 years of teaching experience, 34 of them in California, Whirry, a twelfth-grade English teacher at Mira Costa High School in Manhattan Beach, calls her life "a canvas with swirling brush strokes that depict the motifs of my experience." In addition to her devotion to teaching English and literature, these motifs include presenting over 350 workshops to teachers — 28 on reading and writing strategies in the summer of 1999 alone; conducting sessions for administrators on developing academic standards and evaluating student progress in learning, and doing consultation work in several states and in Japan.
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Whirry
was born in Trenton, New Jersey, on January 12, 1935. She attended
parochial schools during her elementary years and graduated from a
private college preparatory school, Villa Victoria Academy. In 1955,
Whirry graduated from Immaculate Heart College in Los Angeles with
a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and history and in 1958 earned
a Master of Arts degree in English and philosophy from the same institution.
In 1982, she earned a doctorate in Contemporary Literature from International
College in Los Angeles, and has credits from Harvard University and
the University of Southern California. Whirry began teaching in 1959
as an English literature instructor at Immaculate Heart, then as a
high school educator in 1960, teaching English for one year at Newton
High School in Newton, Massachusetts, where she and her family had
moved. From 1961-67, Whirry took classes at Harvard while her then
husband studied for a doctorate, had two children and worked for a
publishing company at home. Moving back to California, she began teaching
English at Mira Costa in 1967 and has been there since. Other teaching
experiences are: graduate professor of Literature and Philosophy at
International College, 1982-85; reading methods instructor at California
State University-Dominguez Hills, 1990-91; and adjunct professor of
education at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles since 1990. |
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Read
Marilyn's E-Journal |
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Each
month we will present an entry from Marilyn's e-journal to keep
you up to date on her personal experiences as the National Teacher
of the Year.
Click here to read her e-journal entry about her trip to Washington, D.C. |
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View
a complete list of every National Teacher of the Year since
the beginning of the program. |
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