Patch Series: Meet Your Local Educators

Editor Note: The following article is part of a series. More Hoboken Educators of the Year will be featured in future posts.

Hoboken Public Schools has named its teachers of the year and educational services professionals of the year.

This year, the New Jersey Department of Education has combined the Teacher of the Year program with Governor’s Teacher/Educational Services Professional Recognition Program. Schools selected one teacher and one educational services professional to be recognized at the school level. The teacher awardees can then nominate themselves for the County Teacher of the Year program.

The following biography information is provided by the Hoboken Public School District.

Juliana Addi: Hoboken Junior Senior High School

A biology teacher at Hoboken Junior Senior High School for the past 13 years, Juliana Addi has always had an enormous passion for science, especially the life sciences.

An animal science major at Rutgers University, Addi wanted to become a teacher so she could combine her creativity and passion for both biology and education to inspire high school students and spark their interest in the field of STEM.

Addi was recently selected from regional applicants for a grant from the National Science Foundation to design, develop, implement and deliver a STEM program for high school biology students in conjunction with GK-12 graduate fellows from Stevens Institute of Technology. She often relates new technological science innovations and STEM practices to the current topic in the classroom. She emphasizes to her students that STEM careers will be the most prosperous in the near future, citing “The Best 25 Jobs to Pursue by 2020” from U.S. News and World Report with 8 of the top 10 jobs being related to STEM careers.

Addi has also researched and implemented a station-based rotational model for blended learning to address the wide academic levels and varied learning styles within the classroom. Her students rotate between a teacher-led center, team-collaborative group center, individualized online learning lab and technology center. By implementing the blended learning program, she has been able to give more individualized support and enrichment, increase student engagement, and has given the students the platform to become team leaders and problem solvers. Through laboratory investigations her students learn to brainstorm like scientists: to be curious, innovative and creative. Her students learn to use protocols as a starting point to design their own investigations and ask their own questions, constructing experiments around their own ideas. Her students analyze and communicate their data with each other in lab group discussions.

Addi has made it her mission to teach in a variety of instructional formats across the spectrum of learning styles and academic abilities in her classroom, knowing that all students learn differently and that all learning styles are valuable tools in education. She has extremely high expectations of her students and supports them in reaching those expectations by preparing them to be knowledgeable in the ways they learn best.

Send Hoboken news tips and releases to Eric.Kiefer@Patch.com