We all can remember our favorite teacher. Maybe it was a patient first grade teacher who taught you how to read. A spunky sixth grade math teacher who made numbers fun. Perhaps it was that witty high school history teacher who taught you how to analyze the world around you. Whoever it was or for whatever reason, there was a sense of sincerity and enthusiasm they embodied that will always linger in your memories. Such teachers are nominated annually for the California Teacher of the Year Award by principals and fellow colleagues.

This year, the Orange County Teacher of the Year Finalists are Armando Gutierrez, Alastair Inman, Joan Malkin and John Puckett. (Though she is not featured here, we extend our congratulations to the fifth finalist, Dr. Cari Cannon of Santiago Canyon College.) These finalists are all under consideration for the California Teacher of the Year Award and will be honored November 19 at the Disneyland Hotel, not only for their exceptional efforts but because each year they are transforming lives—becoming some child’s favorite.

Armando Gutierrez
Glenn L. Martin Elementary School, Santa Ana

His students would simply describe him as cool—the best teacher they’ve ever had, even though they’ve had only one teacher before him. Gutierrez presents himself as a relatable teacher for the students living in Santa Ana, laying a foundation for young minds to achieve great things beyond their circumstances.

First grade teacher Armando Gutierrez, 35, knows what it’s like to be influenced by gang activity—not only were his older siblings heavily involved in gangs, his older brother was shot and killed as a result. This event shaped his attitude and perspective toward his students.

“(When I look at my students), I see myself when I was a kid,” he says.

Gutierrez, who was born in Mexico, was a student of Santa Ana Unified School District and after receiving a college degree (the first in his family), he decided to return to Santa Ana to give back to a community he knows so well.

Gutierrez has been teaching for more than 10 years, with experience at the elementary, junior high and high school levels. His classroom can be described as colorful, energetic and a safe environment for students who may be struggling with distracting obstacles outside of school (like gang violence and living in single-parent households). “Regardless of what happens out in the neighborhood, in my class the kids know they are safe, ” he says.

Besides providing a sense of protection for his first graders, Gutierrez says he want to teach in a such a way that the students will be inspired to break negative cycles.

“I make every lesson interactive and engaging, and I treat them as if they were my own children, ” Gutierrez says.

Joan Malkin
Woodbridge High School, Irvine

She’s rubbed shoulders with Eleanor Roosevelt and Robert F. Kennedy and was on the front lines during the Civil Rights Movement, but don’t you dare tell her students how old she is. “They think anything over 50 is old,” Malkin says. “I want them to think that I’m younger and vibrant.”

A lover of controversy, high school history teacher Joan Malkin, 67, is the kind of teacher that will invite an Israeli and Muslim into the classroom to discuss the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Yet she’s also a teacher that challenges her students to change the world.

During the Civil Rights Movement, Malkin volunteered in Mississippi registering individuals to vote while her husband served in the Vietnam War as a pilot. During college, she worked in the United Nations and met Eleanor Roosevelt and Robert F. Kennedy.

“Meeting them showed me that an individual can change lives,” Malkin says. That’s just what she’s demonstrating to her students, even if the world can seem like a crummy place.

“If you talk to students about a problem in a developing world, they can get depressed and instead of wanting to do something about it, they figure they’re just one person,” she says.

Malkin invites students to get their hands dirty and reach others in their individual and creative ways through assigned student-led community service projects. In the past, students have established a rummage sale earning $2,000 that was donated to Darfur victims and Haitian orphans. Her students have also reached out to war veterans creating Valentine’s Day cards and artwork to patients at the Long Beach Veterans Hospital. Student artwork has reached the veterans far beyond aesthetics, offering some of them the opportunity to shed tears, a gesture they haven’t been able to carry out in years.

John Puckett
Katella High School, Anaheim

He has been told that he is one that never gives up on his students. Regardless of how frustrated his students can feel, John Puckett does not allow them to quit. His gift of pushing students beyond their limits has proven a success throughout his 10 years of teaching.

Woodshop, an endangered class in today’s schools, seems to have been labeled as a course that discourages students from pursuing college—but not in John Puckett’s class. In fact, the irony is that more students who complete Katella High’s woodshop class are inspired to attend college because they realize its opportunities, especially in the construction business.

“College has been pushed on them so much that they think it’s the only reason for high school,” Puckett says. “For the students not going to college, they ask what’s the point of high school. This is an important time in their life, and not just to go to college, but to succeed in whatever they do in life.”

Aside from a full geometry load, Puckett assigns students business proposals and letters, allowing them to make real life connections between their academic classes and wood shop.
Puckett, 42, started his career building houses to pay his way through college. With 27 years of construction under his tool belt, he discovered many woodshop classes were converted into science rooms due to a lack of instructors. This inspired him to pass on his knowledge, so he tried it out by substitute teaching. Ten years later, Puckett is a pioneering woodshop teacher at Katella High School’s Building Industry Tech Academy (BITA). Among his many accomplishments, his students were the first high school students to receive awards for their participation in the non-profit Project Playhouse in 2007.

“The students never cease to amaze me,” Puckett says with a sense of pride.

Alastair Inman
Lexington Junior High School, Anaheim

He considers himself energetic and animated and says his seventh-grade students may describe him as crazy. But with science on his side, students are changing their perceptions about the subject one experiment at a time.

t’s the first in-class activity of the school year and Dr. Alastair Inman asks students to list three adjectives to describe their summer: fun, relaxing, enjoyable are likely responses. He then asks for three adjectives describing science: difficult, boring and hard are typical answers among his seventh-graders, yet little do they know those descriptions will change throughout the academic year.

Inman, 46, is a college professor turned middle school teacher—a shock to his colleagues who considered this to be a backward move professionally. Born in England and raised in Canada, Inman received his Ph.D. in Zoology from Oxford University and was a professor at various universities for 10 years. Yet he didn’t find complete satisfaction.

“I love teaching but didn’t want to do any more researching,” he says.

After 10 years of serving as a college professor, Inman entered a new arena of teaching. Instead of lengthy lectures and scientific research, he provides fun-filled experiments for his students to participate in.

“My biggest ally is science itself,” he says. “Plus, the kids love experimenting.”

Over the years, his students’ favorite experiments have been water bottle rockets, where they design their own rockets and launch them at the end of the school year. Frog dissections are a close second. Inman admits some kids are a bit squeamish at first, but by the end of the experiment, they feel better. Despite his professional transition, Inman has no regrets and counts being a seventh-grade teacher as one of his many achievements.

“My best accomplishment is being able to get the kids turned on about science,” he says.