Smart's Mill Teacher Is Tops

It took Pat Herr a while to get started in the classroom, but she was a natural, and at the School Board meeting Jan. 22, the entire community recognized her achievements.

Herr is Loudoun's Teacher of the Year, and recipient of the Washington Post Agnes Meyer Award.

Herr became a teacher in 1989 after raising three children. Since then, she has taught for five years at Ashburn Elementary School and nine years at Ball's Bluff Elementary in Leesburg. Since 2004, she has introduced eighth-graders at Smart's Mill Middle School in Leesburg to the wonders of science.

It all started a year earlier, in 1988. Her three children were grown and she and husband Anthony had just adopted another child, Rachael, when she stepped into a kindergarten classroom as an aide.

Laurie McDonald, her principal, told her she would be a teacher before she knew it.

She was taking classes before the year was out, adding a master's in education from Marymount University to her undergraduate degree in civics from Frostburg University in Maryland.

She has since finished a certificate in technology education from George Mason University, and in 2004 earned National Board Certification as a Middle Childhood Generalist.

"I don't feel like this award belongs to me," she said. "It belongs to those who supported me – my husband, my children, my colleagues."

Eric Stewart was an assistant principal at Simpson Middle School when Herr showed up day after day to tutor her former fifth-graders. "You can bet I hired her when I became principal of this school and she applied to transfer," he wrote in her nomination packet.

Stewart is no stranger to excellence in the classroom. Last November, he was awarded the Washington Post Educational Leadership Award as Loudoun's top principal of the year.

The Agnes Meyer Award includes a $3,000 prize.

A dozen teachers were nominated for the award this year: Nicole Bartow, AP psychology and AB government at Park View High School; Laura Clairmont, special education at Newton-Lee Elementary; Linda Cousins-Seymour, fourth grade at Hamilton Elementary; Robert Hanger, biology at Loudoun County High School; Lois Diann Morales, first grade at Seldens Landing Elementary; Kathy Thomas, second grade at Algonkian Elementary; Nancy Tittelbaugh-Riley, choral music at Heritage High; Mary Jo Totman, third grade at Tolbert Elementary; Leigh Anne VanderWijst, fourth grade at Sycolin Creek Elementary; Melanie Vangsnes, third grade at Waterford Elementary; and Karen Weiss, first grade at Pinebrook Elementary.

Clairmont, Herr and Tittelbaugh-Riley were finalists.

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