Special Education Teacher Award Winners for Spring 2008

Chris Castillo, Manzano High School Special Education Teacher, received one of seven statewide “Golden Apple 2008” teacher awards recognizing her superb teaching performance. She was introduced at the award ceremony by her student Joshua "JT” Wilson, who told the large audience about the many things Ms. Castillo had done for him and his fellow special education students. Mr. Whalen, MHS Principal, was on hand to celebrate Ms. Castillo’s award.  

Dennis Higgins of Bellehaven ES

Dennis Higgins, APS District Teacher of the Year 2008

An Award from Veronica Garcia, Secretary of Education and the PED

by Linda Dunstan

 As you walk into his classroom, you immediately notice that students are engaged in hands-on learning. The environment with its student-designed colored lighting, materials centers, and displays of student work lets you know that this is a place of serious, but fun, learning.

Dennis Higgins, Ph.D., received the APS District Teacher of the Year Award in February 2008. He has worked as a teacher of gifted students who also have disabilities for the past thirty years. He is also a well known professor of gifted education at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque where he has helped develop the skills of new teachers to gifted education for the past twenty years.

Last year, he received the Golden Apple Aware and the year before was inducted into the Kansas Music Hall of Fame. He is a composer of children’s music and has produced four CDs of original music that are on sale at Borders Books and throughout the United States. His class was filmed in 2007 as a model program for the PBS documentary Reading Rockets: A Chance to Read by WETA Television, a Washington D.C. syndicated network. Reading Rockets is a national multimedia project offering information and resources on how young children learn to read, why so many struggle, and how caring adults can help.

When asked about his strengths as a teacher, he stated that he believes his ability to question and to listen paired with his attention to both the academic and emotional needs of his students are the keys to his success. He also feels that creativity when designing curricula for these special learners is imperative. His students, who have high potential in achievement, creativity and critical thinking, also need extra help to fill in learning gaps caused by their disabilities. By attending to these needs, Mr. Higgins supports their development as gifted learners.

He gives a great deal of credit to his principal at Bellehaven, Nedda Hamilton, for his freedom to be a creative teacher. Her flexibility and appreciation of creativity have provided his students and him with the right learning environment.

Congratulations to Dennis on a well deserved reward.

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