Nicolini wins outstanding educator award

Penn teacher Mrs. Nicolini recently received the University of Chicago Oustanding Educator Award.

In an email interview, she commeted on receiving the award. Mrs. Nicolini came to Penn in 1994 after teaching at Indianapolis Broad Ripple High School since 1987. Mrs. Nicolni wasn’t looking to leave Broad Ripple, but she met Penn’s principal Dr. Gene Sweeney, in 1994 and he said that Penn want to make writing the center of its curriculum. Mrs. Nicolini was amazed and decided to move.

As a teacher, she believes that, “sometimes the best thing I can do is get out of the way of my students and let them construct knowledge and make meaning.”  Her job as a teacher is “nudge” them along from where they are to where they could be. She says, “I want to give my students opportunities to discover on their own–to find connections between the world and our reading and writing.”

Mrs. Nicolini described how it felt when she won the award. “I am touched and honored that my former student recommended me.  She was my student as a sophomore, and a student assistant her junior and senior year, so I got to know her quite well, both as a student writer and as a young adult. She is very serious about her studies, and is a good writer and thinker. I’m glad that I was able to have some influence on her life.”

Mrs. Nicolni has learned many things throughout her experiences teaching. She commented on her experinces by saying, “Teaching, especially teaching writing, is a task to approach with humility and respect for others. People have such stories to tell, and writing is a way to honor them. C. S. Lewis wrote that we read to know we are not alone, and I believe, too, that we write to know we are not the only ones experiencing what we are. My students teach me every day; they give me hope for our future.”