Coming from a family of teachers, Jeanna Sciarrotta found a teaching style that works for both herself and her students
By KRYSTAL NURSE
The Sun
Editor’s note: This story is part three of four profiling the employees in the Clearview Regional School District who were given the Teacher or Educational Specialist of the Year distinctions.
Clearview Regional Middle School teacher Jeanna Sciarrotta, who comes from a family of teachers, always knew she wanted to be an English teacher. At the middle school, she helps her students develop a love for reading and writing.
Sciarrotta was named the middle school’s Teacher of the Year in December. She said she was surprised when the administration came in to the room, but was humbled and thankful for the honor.
“At first, I thought one of my students, Peyton [Sherrill] — who is in that class and I call my Little Ninja — I thought she’d done something over the weekend and hadn’t told me,” said Sciarrotta referencing Sherrill who is involved with American Ninja Warrior Junior and various local competitions. “It didn’t settle in right away.”
She said she’s been in the district for 11 years, but this is her first year at the middle school, where she teaches seventh-grade students. Throughout the year, she frequently meets with her students to help them find an inner love for reading and writing.
“I try to get the non-readers into reading by just finding books and suggesting books that they can make a connection with and hoping that they can be lifelong readers,” said Sciarrotta. “There’s so much more to this subject than just reading and writing. Even though I do that, my purpose is that through school, they do these things because they enjoy them.”
Sciarrotta not only relies on herself to teach English and language arts to students, but their peers as well through book reviews, independent choice reading and writing assignments and giving them the freedom to search and find out on their own what works best for them.
Not all students, however, find that passion for reading, but she insists on working with them to help them move smoothly through her class.
“Sometimes just a conversation and working with them and saying ‘what are the things you do get,’ ‘what do you understand,’ ‘what aren’t you understanding,’ and working through it and giving some helpful hints on how they might tackle something,” she said. “Some suggestions to move them in the right direction.”
She tries to learn who her students are, or who they want to be, and assists them in their paths to success during one-on-one lessons or meetings with them.
“I’ll even sometimes make a note on my desk, because the day goes by and I forget things, ‘check on so and so,’” she said. “I may have noticed something and I could see that they were floundering with what they were doing and they could be redirected, and so I’ll pull them back to work with me.”
She added her lessons aren’t always done at the students’ desks. She makes English exciting for them by allowing students to lead classroom discussions and to have them out of their chairs and moving.
Like any other profession, Sciarrotta said there are low points where she questions if she’s still connecting with students or if she should continue teaching.
“There are times where I think back on specific days that were magical to me or letters that students wrote — I’m such a dork, I keep all of them in a file,” she said. “When you have a day like that, you need to be able to look back and remember because everything is not 100 percent fantastic all of the time.”
One of the things about teaching Sciarrotta said always makes her elated is hearing back from students on how much she has personally affected her students. She receives high school and college graduation photos from former students with notes saying how they’re studying to be a teacher and how she helped them get into leisure reading.
“To know that I’ve been teaching long enough to have kids who are older, and who keep coming back and say ‘I remember when we read this book’ or ‘I remember this piece and how it has made an impact on me,’ that’s always been rewarding for me,” said Sciarrotta.
