| FOR IMMEDIATE
RELEASE
N.R. #339, 6/22/05 Date: June
22, 2005 COUNTY ESOL TEACHER SELECTED HISPANIC TEACHER OF THE YEAR Vera Darter, the ESOL Department Chair at Freedom High School, has been named the Victoria D. de Sanchez Hispanic Teacher of the Year by the Hispanic Youth Foundation and George Mason University, College of Education and Human Development. The award is named in honor of a woman who is responsible for "parenting" a generation of teachers and administrators in the United States and Latin America. Darter, a native of Costa Rica, is an outstanding role model who believes in "quiet excellence." Her love of her students provides them with the strength to overcome all the barriers most adolescent Latinos and immigrant students face as they enter an American high school for the first time. “As an ESOL (English
for Speakers of Other Languages) teacher in Prince William County Schools
for over 14 years, Mrs. Darter has been one of our anchors of the ESOL
program and has forever affected the future lives of so many immigrant
students, mostly Latinos,” says Carol Bass, Supervisor of ESOL
& Foreign Languages for Prince William County Public Schools. Darter
is one of 250 ESOL teachers for the school division which serves over
9,000 ESOL students.
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