Caputo and Michaeli Named Teachers of the Year for 2011

Kim Caputo of the middle school and Shoshana Michaeli of the high school have been named “Teachers of the Year for 2011,” reported Steve Forte, high school principal.

Caputo, who teaches math at the middle school, said all it took was one class on education to show her that teaching was what she was meant to do.  Originally she planned to become a lawyer and had earned her associate degree from Berkeley College and then went on to work as a legal secretary for a year before going back to school to pursue law.

She attended William Paterson College where she took pre-law classes along with an education course she took as a result of her father’s advice to try to teaching. She said he had told her he “saw it in her.”

“Needless to say I listened to him and took that one class. Well, one class was all I needed to know education was it for me. My professor, Dr. Coletta was an incredible mentor. Between my Dad and [Coletta] I found my true calling,” said Caputo.

She earned her bachelors degree in education and worked in the Lyndhurst School District for about a year before she came to Hasbrouck Heights. “The rest is history,” she says. She has since earned two masters degree and a supervisor certificate as well.

High school math teacher Michaeli majored in mathematics and statistics at Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She taught math at the high school and middle school level for 15 years in Israel. She taught statistics in the math department of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

She then came to the U.S. and taught for one year at Bronx High School of Science and has since been teaching in New Jersey for the past 17 years.

Michaeli has created and patented a Unit-Circle Manipulative which can be used in trigonometry.

When she’s not exploring mathematics, Michaeli said she enjoys listening to music, travelling and playing with her two grandsons.