Excellence in Teaching at Botelle

By Sally Quale

For a surefire lift of spirits, pay a visit to a good school in session—like Botelle—and engage in conversation with the two new bright and enthusiastic teachers on board. The surrounding air fairly sparkles with their energy.

Tina Boutilier, the school’s first full-time hire in ten years, is teaching one of the two sixth grade classes. A native of Middlebury, she earned her Elementary Education certificate from St. Joseph’s College, West Hartford, last spring, having majored in Human Development. Tina is partial to teaching the older elementary grades. “It is a misunderstood age, one that I love teaching,” she explains. The students still possess the exuberance of childhood and enjoy the fun of hands-on learning, yet are ready for the acquisition of more serious material through research and critical thinking.

Mrs. Boutilier says that Botelle has thus far met all of her critera for the perfect first teaching job: “The classes are small [she has 16 charges], the kids are great, and the community supports a well-funded institution.” Beaming, she adds: “I have five new computers in my classroom this year!” Finally, she loves Norfolk’s rural character—“I’m a country girl.”

The second essentially-new staffer (she assisted in the pre-K last year), Rachel Hurlbut, holds a part-time (30%) position teaching the pre-Kindergarten class that meets three hours on three mornings per week.  As quick and as cheerful as Tina, she earned her B.A. in Early Childhood Education from Central Connecticut State University, New Britain, in 2005.

Ms. Hurlbut uses the changing seasons as the framework for her curriculum, and, while adhering to state standards, she chooses to incorporate them into her own lesson plans. She considers herself blessed to have only eight students in her very own first class. Outside Botelle, she spends her afternoons in Colebrook, working with students needing academic support, and has assisted Kristen Pizzica in her landscape gardening enterprise, work that she finds “very therapeutic.”

Turning from the new to the seasoned, each year Botelle’s staff recognizes and honors one of its own with the Teacher of the Year award. This year’s recipient, recently chosen, is Sandy Stotler, who is still as “bright” and “enthusiastic” as the newest staff members above, even though she has been at the helm of Botelle’s Kindergarten classroom for more than two decades. A graduate of UConn’s School of Early Childhood Education, Sandy admits that she “always wanted to be a teacher since I was nine years old. My 3^rd grade teacher did it!”

She identifies a number of changes in the curriculum since her first days in the classroom, noting that children are now learning as much in Kindergarten as yesterday’s 1^st graders. “Today, by the end of Kindergarten, some children are writing full sentences,” she says, displaying one or two of the daily journals that the children keep from September through June. On each page, the child has drawn a picture and then, below, described it in writing as best he or she can. From literally scribbling a sentence or two in September, the child begins to include single letters, and, later on, words. Mrs. Stotler’s excitement and pride at her students’ growth, however fast or slow, is as fresh and as true today as it surely was over twenty years ago in her first days of her teaching career.

Mrs. Stotler represented Norfolk at the annual Connecticut Teacher of the Year ceremonies in Hartford on November 15, 2007. Married to Jim Stotler, a Norfolk Selectmen, she has three children, two of whom are also teachers. Described as “like my mom, or my grandma,” by some of her young charges, Mrs. Stotler IS grandma to two first-graders at Botelle, twins Morgan and Madison Hall.

Enrollment at Botelle is variable, and staffing is therefore challenging. Six years of enrollment figures show a general upward trend:

2002-2003 148 students

2003-2004 160 students

2004-2005 150 students

2005-2006 158 students

2006-2007 173 students

2007-2008 164 students

Norfolk’s Superintendent George Counter is just beginning his projections for next year’s budget that will be unveiled, initially to the Board of Education, in late January. When asked to predict the 2008-2009 figures, Counter names enrollment as a driving force. Based upon “live birth” figures obtained from Town Hall and this year’s slightly lower enrollment, he projects this downward trend will continue, since the 33 6^th graders moving on to Regional 7 will be replaced by only 15-16 children currently expected in pre-K. In that case, he suggested, “It is likely that we will be down at least one staff member.”

Photo, top, of Botelle School teachers (from left) Tina Boutilier, Sandy Stotler and Rachel Hurlbut, by Adela Hubers.