Alameda High's Tony Manno in the Running for Teaching Award

Alameda High School history teacher Tony Manno is one of five Bay Area educators in the running for the 2011 Comcast SportsNet All-Star Teacher Award

The grand prize is an award of $20,000 to the school or school district where the winner is employed.

The best thing about the contest, Manno said, is all the support he's received from current and former students. “It’s really gratifying," he said. 

As a finalist, Manno is following something of a local tradition. 's Allen Nakamura won the Comcast award in 2008. 

Manno has introduced the Island's young people to history for the past 24 years, teaching at Encinal High School and Lincoln Middle School before moving to his current post at Alameda High. 

After graduating Phi Beta Kappa from UC Berkeley  and taking some time off to play music, Manno returned to college, earning both a master's degree in history and a teaching credential. A love for and knowledge of music, particularly improvisation (he is a drummer), informs Manno's teaching.

How long have you been teaching and what is your educational background? I've been teaching since 1987.

What first made you want to teach? Two things. I’ve always loved history. Plus I really like high school kids. They’re a lot of fun. High school kids, most of them, are going off to college and are full of dreams and are genuinely optimistic. Their idealism propels them and that is uplifting.

What is your favorite thing about teaching? I’m not good with favorites. It’s so arbitrary. I like a lot of things about teaching. The reasons why I got into it are still some of the reasons why I like it. I like the creative demands of the work. I like being fresh. I love lesson planning. I mean it might sound weird, but I like coming up with creative ways to not only deliver the material, but get something out of the kids that they will hopefully appreciate and remember.

You are the department head? I was. I was for at least seven years, I think. The administrative part go to be a real hassle because you have to keep track of all of the minutia, and I’m not good at trying to order people to do what they are supposed to do. 

What is it like teaching in the current budget climate? I think you really have to like teaching, because there are always economic challenges. It seems like every year we have our hat in our hand, begging people for money. The whole taxation set-up has us really shortchanged, and California is already behind most of the rest of the states.

So you really have to like teaching to be here, and I think none of us takes our kids for granted because of that. I think we respect the kids enough that we don’t just order them to do stuff — we work with them and give them our reasons why we’re going to do stuff. I think that helps.

What makes Alameda such a great place to live and work in? Well, first of all the kids are great. They’re really nice. They’re friendly. They don’t have chips on their shoulders, they seem pretty darn polite—except to their own parents, of course. And this is a really average school—and I don’t mean this in a bad way—in that it has something of everything: it has incredibly bright kids, it has really rich kids, but then it also has some poor kids and a lot of middle class kids. It’s got all different ethnicity types. So it’s a great mixture. I guess that’s what I mean by average: it’s a blend of so many different things. That’s why I like it here.

What would you like to see done with the money if you win? Well, I could use a new LCD projector because I use mine so much. I’m not all that creative when it comes to spending money—except on myself. So I would imagine technology would probably be the quickest bang for the buck.

I know our department would like to get a document camera. Apparently there is a technique where you don’t have to buy Scantrons any more—you can make your own by printing these things out. We could save probably hundreds of dollars a year just by using the document camera for grading tests. So that’s one idea. I’m sure the administration will have a lot of other ideas.

No In-N-Out truck or Taco Truck? I have been joking about having a bouncy room or a two-lane bowling alley in the middle of the media center. A meat smoker. Ice cream truck for the faculty.

What is your favorite place in Alameda? I think my favorite restaurant is . I like walking around the lagoon sometimes. I like walking on the green belt, looking at the Bay. I like riding my bike around Harbor Bay. I love the Gold Coast and all of those beautiful homes. I love the area right off of Fernside where a lot of the streets are named after universities, and all of those crazy blocks that don’t make any sense whatsoever. There are beautiful homes there and they are all unique. If I were rich, that’s where I would live.

What's it like being nominated for this honor? I think one of the things that’s been most rewarding so far is being contacted by former students, including yourself. I know they didn’t forget me, but they’ve been busy with their lives. They’re contacting me again and that’s really gratifying. The people give me best wishes and remember things and just say great things on Facebook. That’s been the greatest thing so far.