WASILLA -- Shelley Heiserman, a fifth-grade teacher at Cottonwood Creek Elementary School, was selected in June as the 2007 Mat-Su Teacher of the Year.
Heiserman earned the honor even though a battle with breast cancer kept her out of the classroom for most of the 2006-2007 school year.
"That's how special she is. She's just an icon in the community of what a great teacher should be," said Emily Forstner, the professional development coordinator for the Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District.
Heiserman grew up in the small farming community of Medicine Lake, Mont. Her teaching career spans three decades and has led her to places as diverse as the South Pacific Island of Guam and the remote community of Metlakatla on Alaska's Annette Island.
Her tenure in the Valley began in 1983, when she started teaching music at Cottonwood Creek. She spent the next 14 years there, eventually teaching third and fourth grade and finally gym.
Heiserman formed a district-wide extracurricular jump rope program while working as a gym teacher. The program eventually grew to more than 800 jumpers coached by parent volunteers at schools across the Valley. Out of this program, she formed the Mat-Su Skippers, a competition and demonstration jump rope team that competed several times at state and national levels. The team placed second in national competitions in both Colorado and Florida, according to Heiserman.
In 1997 Heiserman transferred to Colony Middle School, where she returned to her roots as a music teacher. Under her direction, Colony boasted one of the strongest middle school music programs in the state. In addition to leading the sixth-, seventh- and eighth-grade bands, she also formed an 80-student pep band, a jazz band, a handbell choir and a 100-member choir, all of which performed year-round throughout the community.
In 2000, Heiserman traded her director's baton for a blackboard again and began teaching eighth-grade math. She transferred to Teeland Middle School the following year, where for four years she taught both eighth-grade math and sixth-grade advanced math.
In 2005, she returned to Cottonwood Creek as a fifth-grade teacher.
Assistant superintendent Deena Paramo has worked with Heiserman since her days at Colony Middle School. Paramo served as her assistant principal at both Colony and Teeland and as her principal at Cottonwood.
Whatever the subject, Heiserman's students succeed, she said.
"She always holds kids to pretty high standards and they deliver," she said.
By her own account, Heiserman is a tough teacher.
"No child is left behind in my classroom because not being successful is not an option," she stated in a professional biography.
But parents and students alike say Heiserman goes out of her way to ensure that success.
Anne Kilkenny, whose son Leif Johnson was one of her math students at Teeland, says Heiserman's classes were highly structured; she allowed no "down time" for students to goof off. Kilkenny nominated Heiserman for Teacher of the Year.
"There was lots of homework, but also lots of help," she stated in her nomination letter. "She made herself available before school, during lunch, after school and in the evenings to help students."
Leif, now a junior at Wasilla High School, says he took advantage of that extra help many times, especially in sixth grade when he hadn't yet developed the study skills Heiserman demanded of her students.
"In her class you really had to be focused. She was really, really hard," he said.
But she was fair, he said. He counts her as one of the toughest teachers he's ever had and as one of the best.
But students aren't the only ones who thrive because of Heiserman, Paramo said. "As a principal, she's the kind of person that you want in your building because she keeps you learning."
Find Becky Stoppa online at adn.com/contact/bstoppa or call 352-6708.
