BCIT Teacher Named New Jersey Council for the Humanities Teacher of the Year
Jeanne DelColle Named Humanities Teacher of the Year Marlton resident Jeanne DelColle of Burlington County Institute of Technology has been named the 2010 Teacher of the Year by the New Jersey Council for the Humanities (NJCH). The Council's executive director, Jane Brailove Rutkoff, has hailed DelColle for "her singular accomplishments as a teacher and her remarkable ability in connecting history and culture with the worlds of her students." In naming her Teacher of the Year, the awards committee was particularly impressed by the way in which DelColle brings her extensive travel experience ”she has visited five continents and worked on archaeological digs in Amman, Jordan” into the classroom to make history come alive. Outside the classroom, DelColle has been an invited guest lecturer on "Daily Life in Ancient Times" at an NEH Institute at Andrews University in Michigan and participated in the Dar al Islam Teachers Institute in Abiquiu, New Mexico. DelColle's passion for teaching inspires students to see the world in new ways. In the words of BCIT's principal, Joseph Venuto, "Whether students are learning how to analyze Renaissance art, participating in her historical fiction book club, or debating the values that are needed to make an effective government; they take away a unique experience from her world history class that they will never forget." The impact she has on her students is measurable and lasting. As one student said, "I walked into Room 507, unaware I was in for the challenge of my life". DelColle believed that all her students were capable of understanding more than what our textbooks could provide. From ancient Egypt to modern day culture, Ms. DelColle has had some sort of personal knowledge to share with us. Says DelColle, "The day we stop learning we die. Whether we are a teacher or student, and we never cease to be both, we all have something to learn from each other. Every person has a gift to offer and strength in different areas of intelligence." Her students are asked to come to grips with questions such as the influence of art and archaeology on the study of history. How do historians work with primary sources? How do we balance the rights of individuals in societies with the common good? DelColle leads her students through an exercise in which separate decorated terra cotta flower pots are broken, then with spatial reasoning and masking tape reassembled much as an archaeological team would reconstruct a piece of ancient pottery and identify its previous owners by interpreting symbols on the shards. The class thereupon enters into an exploration of the ethics of archaeology, including whom the works in question really belong to and where they are to be exhibited. DelColle is a graduate of the Richard Stockton College and has an MA in Liberal Studies from Rutgers University, Camden. She also received a Postgraduate Diploma in Politics and International Studies from the University of Warwick in Coventry, England. She has been teaching at Burlington County Institute of Technology since 2003. Jeanne DelColle was honored at the annual NJCH Awards Celebration recently held at the Montclair Art Museum. The Teacher of the Year Award is bestowed annually on an elementary, middle school, or high school teacher who understands the complexity, value and richness of the humanities, including such subjects as history, literature, comparative religion, world cultures, and ethics, and whose approach to humanities education is interdisciplinary and creative.
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