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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Date: December 14, 2001
Number: nr 01-09
Contact: Nan Powers Varoga, 713-658-1881, ext. 14
nvaroga@houstonaplus.org

Anita Lyons’ heart is so big it could fill the expanse between her classroom and the native homelands of her English as a Second Language (ESL) students. Always seeking to understand her students, their parents, and the larger community, Lyons personifies the belief that relationships are critical in teaching and that parent and community involvement is at the heart of every school.

This philosophy has garnered Lyons, a teacher at Sharpstown Middle School in the Houston Independent School District, the honor of 2001 ESL Teacher of the Year from the Texas Association of Bilingual Education. Originally a speech therapist, Lyons has taught some form of language acquisition since moving into the classroom in 1981. She focuses her ESL lessons on history, which naturally fosters parental involvement. Students invite their parents to school to share their culture through food, costumes, and the like.

It was this dedication to outreach, said Principal Margo Bullock, which made Lyons a “natural” to lead the group planning how to increase parent and community involvement under a grant from The Houston A+ Challenge in 1997. With her students and other team members, Lyons collected 1,600 surveys from area residents and businesses—work that school representatives say was instrumental in Sharpstown being named a Lamplighter School in 1998 by Houston A+.
Annenberg, says Lyons, “makes you think and put a plan on paper.” The Annenberg grant has increased communication among Sharpstown teachers and parents and provided professional development that normally would have been unaffordable.

As a member of the Sharpstown Annenberg Leadership Team, Lyons continues to build on one of the basic tenets of the Houston A+ Challenge—making the school a vital part of the neighborhood and community. Her committee meets in area businesses, encouraging them to visit the school. Parents are invited to attend classes to learn computer skills and are shown how to help their children with homework. She helped plan this year’s program in which each teacher adopted between 10 and 13 families, giving each family a parent advocate. She shared her visits with Ruby Payne, a noted expert on working with children of poverty, with Sharpstown colleagues and teachers from Lee High.
Lyons even walks to school, says Bullock, “not because she lives close, but so she can be with the kids and be out in the neighborhood.”

Eighth grader Diana Gonzalez first met Lyons in August 2000 after arriving from San Luis Potosî, Mexico. Now quite fluent in English, she remembers Lyons sitting her next to another Spanish-speaking student with the same class schedule. Special activities included calendar skills in English, Spanish, and Vietnamese and sharing culture bags filled with items from her native Mexico. Gonzalez also liked being Student of the Week because Lyons announced information about her to the entire student body.

“I always talked to her because she was like my mom at school. When I was having problems with a subject, she would help,” said Gonzalez who now works on Lyons’ yearbook staff. “She’s a very nice person. Very cool.”
Gonzalez’ mother, Rosa Ortega, accompanied her daughter’s class on a field trip to the Museum of Natural Science. In a recommendation letter for Lyons, she said she was “pleasantly surprised at the wonderful behavior of the students and the control and very sweet way this wonderful Señora exerts on them.” Ortega went on to thank God for her daughter’s education being “in the hands of a teacher truly given to her profession.”
Lyons also believes her students need real-world experience. So, she and her kids assist yearly with events ranging from the Houston International Festival and Ed White Field Day to Chase (Bank) Global Days of Service. They have cleaned Galveston’s beaches, assisted Habitat for Humanity and helped the City of Houston with a neighborhood carnival.
For Lyons, these extensions of the classroom are outstanding opportunities for her students to learn English while giving back to the community. Lyons, says Elizabeth Van Auken, Sharpstown grant writer and head of the school’s Annenberg Leadership Team, is “one of those really special people” who always helps those in need.
Bullock and Lyons have worked together since 1988, when Bullock, then principal of Ed White Elementary, hired Lyons as a kindergarten teacher. Lyons is “one of the most charismatic people I’ve ever seen in the classroom,” said Bullock. Lyons was “instrumental” in revitalizing the Asian community at Sharpstown and getting members to participate in an after-school program and weekly meetings—not an easy feat in a school where students represent more than 60 countries.
Lyons has previously been nominated for Teacher of the Year by the Freedom Foundation and thrice been named ESL Teacher of the Year by Houston schools. But this big-hearted, inspiring, and energetic woman is most proud of her students. Standing next to a bulletin board with English, Spanish and Vietnamese calendars and pointing to a chalkboard with Chinese, Urdu, Russian, Arabic and Punjabi greetings, she says, “See why I say I have the smartest kids in the world? They’re processing all this, hearing only in English. They teach me something everyday.”

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