NEWS RELEASE
Release date: June 6, 2006
Contact: Caron Blanton, APR, Director of Communications, (601) 359-3706 or Wesley Williams, Director, Mississippi Teacher Center, (601) 359-3631 or Cecily McNair, Director of Recruitment and Enhancement, (601) 359-3631
Mississippi Teacher of the Year announced at dinner
Choctaw County Career/Technical Center teacher Lee James was named the 2006 Teacher of the Year at a luncheon held today in Oxford. Jamilliah Longino, a teacher at Rowan Middle School in the Jackson Public School District, was named 2006 Alternate Teacher of the Year.
Other Congressional District Finalists include Nancy Ray, Poplar Springs Elementary School, Meridian, and Donna Porter, Picayune High School.
The 2006 Mississippi Teacher of the Year will receive a $5,000 salary supplement from the Mississippi Department of Education. James will compete in the National Teacher of the Year competition and be invited to attend the National Teacher of the Year Conference in Dallas. He will also travel to Washington, D.C., meet President George W. Bush and First Lady Laura Bush, and participate in a Rose Garden recognition ceremony at the White House.
2006 Mississippi Teacher of the Year
Lee James
As an agricultural power and machinery operations teacher at the Choctaw County Career & Technology Center in Ackerman, Lee James has a passion for both his students and his subject matter. He demands excellence from himself as well as his students. Recently certified by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, he has helped his students to excel in the activities related to his program.
He has had nine state officers in the Mississippi FFA, five State Star Farmers, five State Star Agribusinessmen, over 40 State FFA Proficiency Award winners and one Gold Emblem Proficiency Award national finalist, and four students who have competed in speaking events on a national level.
Lee has been elected to serve as president of the National Association of Agriculture Educators (NAAE), an organization of over 5,000 members. He also holds a lifetime membership in the organization.
He helps instill his students with a sense of community and service through projects that he has coordinated as adviser for the Future Farmers of America chapter. He has involved his students in the construction and maintenance of beautification and other projects that benefit their community. He also teaches them the importance of community service through the example he sets. He has served as city alderman on two occasions, from 1980 to 1984 and from 1993 to the present. He also serves as Mayor Pro-Tem.
As a member of the Choctaw County economic development foundation, he has served on committees that promote our community and county. He was involved in negotiations that brought a lignite mine and an electric power plant to Choctaw County, resulting in 500 new jobs for its citizens. He is also involved in the development of a county industrial park. Identified as the county ecoplex, it is proposed to be an environmentally friendly park that utilizes byproducts of the other industries on site.
In 2005, Lee received the Mississippi FFA Association Outstanding Service Award. He received the National Association of Agriculture Educators Mentor Award and was named the MSACTE Teacher of the Year for Agriculture Division in 2000. A recipient of the NAAE Outstanding Service Citation, he was also named the Mississippi Association of Vocational Agricultural Teachers Teacher of the Year.
Through his membership in numerous state and local organizations and committees, Lee has served in several leadership positions and made a tremendous difference in agriculture education. These organizations include the Association of Career and Technical Educators, the National Association of Agriculture Educators, the Mississippi Association of Career and Technical Educators, the National FFA Organization Board of Trustees, the Council for Agriculture Education, the Mississippi FFA Foundation Board of Directors and the Mississippi FFA Board of Directors.
A north Mississippi native, he holds a bachelor's degree from Mississippi State University and attended Northeast Mississippi Community College. His wife, Sharon, is a vocational teacher, and son, Cody, is a chef.
2005 Alternate Teacher of the Year
Jamilliah Longino
Although she felt compelled to teach for many years, Jamilliah Longino pursued other career opportunities first before finally listening to her heart and pursuing a master's degree that enabled her to teach language arts to the eighth grade student at Rowan Middle School in the Jackson Public School District.
Both Longino and her students have soared since she made this decision. She is certified by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards and volunteers with the Foundation for Educational Excellence, a nonprofit organization. Working through FEE's educational initiative program, she assists underprivileged with the necessary resources to be successful in school and provides free tutorial services to students and parents.
She has also helped her students to learn the importance of helping others and extending her classroom to the community. One example includes the Medicare/Medicaid Awareness Campaign. Students were charged with interviewing family and community members about their concerns regarding the Medicaid/Medicare Bill. In addition, Longino hosted the Lifeline Program, where students were assigned to express sincere thanks, in words and token, during a ceremony to a person who had been a lifeline in their lives.
Longino is a member of the American Federation of Teachers, the Mississippi Council of Teachers of English and the Mississippi Association for Reading Teachers. She holds a bachelor's degree in criminal justice from the University of Southern Mississippi and a master's degree with a concentration in secondary education from Jackson State University.
She and her husband, Caliph Longino III, a database coordinator, have two sons.
Third Congressional District Finalist
Nancy Ray
Meridian Public School District teacher Nancy Ray certainly believes in the art and science of teaching and in blending both art and science into her teaching. She teaches artistically and intellectually gifted students in second through fifth grade at Poplar Elementary School and helps them to explore, learn and grow through both scientific and artistic endeavors.
Ray has helped generate ideas for, pilot and assess nine comprehensive marine biology workshops for Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida, Puerto Rico, Honduras, Bermuda, and Mexico. Thousands of students from Mississippi and Alabama have been directly impacted through the experiences of teachers who participated in this training through the years.
By serving on the Fine Arts Frameworks Revision Committee for the Mississippi Department of Education, she helped redefine the direction of arts education Mississippi and created related arts activities and resource guides for teachers. Last year, she submitted a grant application to the Mississippi Arts Commission for Poplar Elementary to become a Whole School Initiative program and now serves as the project director. She is responsible for designing and overseeing the implementation of the arts integration program for their school and for procuring and evaluating appropriate training for their teachers.
She has worked extensively in promoting arts education and arts experiences in the Meridian area, primarily as a volunteer worker for the Meridian Council for the arts and the MSU Riley Performing Arts Center. As Second Vice-President and Education Committee member of the Meridian Council for the Arts, she is actively involved in the council's efforts to become a partner in the Kennedy Center Partners in Education program, which will allow them to provide superior training for local teachers and arts agencies and dramatically increase the amount of grant dollars available to support the new downtown arts district and museums.
In addition, she often facilitates student projects to benefit the community, such as their renovation design of a building, study of the bat infestation of a historic building and the plans to exclude the bats, and creation of Christmas ornaments to aid fundraising efforts for an historic mansion.
She also helps students become the teachers for their parents and other community members. During the “Blood and Guts Action Lab,” Ray's students converted the entire building into a tour of the human body. Entering through a cavernous plywood mouth, guests passed by a large beating heart as blood veins (red cellophane-wrapped tracer lights) coursed down halls disguised with tunnels of pink carpet pad. The students assumed the role of “teachers” dressed in medical attire, presenting research and demonstrations about the body systems, creating an unforgettable experience for parents, guests, and schoolmates.
The Mississippi Alliance for the Arts named Ray their Thad Cochran Excellence in the Arts: Educator of the Year in 2002. She was inducted into the Mississippi Hall of Master Teachers by the Mississippi University for Women in 2003. A recipient of the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science teaching, she received a Fulbright Scholarship to Japan for a three-week study of Japanese culture and education system in 2000 and an S.A. Rosenbaum Fellowship to participate in an Earthwatch project to study dolphins in Australia in 1999.
In 1998, Ray was one of 14 teachers selected to participate in a two-week marine biology/geography study aboard the Navy research ship, U.S.S. Pathfinder, in the Mediterranean Sea, sponsored by the U.S. Navy and St. Norbert College's Ocean Voyager's Program.
A graduate of the University of Southern Mississippi, she serves as the communications chairman for the Delta Kappa Gamma Executive Board and is a member of the Mississippi Alliance for the Arts and the National Arts Educators Association.
She is married to Harvey Ray and has seven adult children, Phil Nelson, Mark Nelson, Blanton Ray, Craig Ray, Emily Tillman, Paige Mimms, and Holly Hudnall.
Fourth Congressional District Finalist
Donna Porter
Donna Porter has spent 20 years in education, but only the past four as a teacher. Before becoming an oral communications teacher at Picayune High School, she served as a speech/language pathologist, speech pathologist, educational diagnostician, and an early childhood intervention coordinator and dyslexia coordinator. Through all of these positions, she has made an incredible difference in the educational experience of countless children, but in her classroom, she and her children truly soar.
Regardless of the struggles her students may face in the home and lives, she helps them to gain self-confidence and self-esteem through learning how to communicate through her classes and the speech and debate team she coaches. Although many students may fear public speaking at the beginning of her class, she enables them to overcome this fear and gain important skills they will use throughout their lives.
In 2002, she received the Community Developer of the Year Award for outstanding efforts in furthering education and economic development programs. She encourages her students to be service-oriented and has helped them to succeed in numerous projects, including Hearts to Heroes, a program to bring Christmas to the families of military personnel from the Picayune area who were serving in Iraq, Operation Christmas Child, providing needed items to children in third world countries, and Project Soup Kitchen, collecting donated canned goods to help initiate a soup kitchen project in the community.
Having coached numerous state finalists in speech competition, she has coached a national finalist in impromptu speaking and a state champion in oratory as well as the best actor at the Mississippi Theater Association State Festival.
A member of the American Speech and Hearing Association, Porter has conducted training on Conscious Discipline, Dyslexia and other topics at numerous state and national conferences.
Porter holds a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in speech and language pathology from the University of Southern Mississippi and has completed post-graduate studies in audiology at the University of Southern Mississippi.
She is married to Mark Porter, a customer service manager, and has two sons, Chase Porter, a student a Mississippi College, and Chad Porter, a student in the Picayune School District.