Math Teacher

McDaniel College football players have had a new playbook since January and the results have been pretty impressive. As mentors for eighth-grade students at East Middle School, the players have helped students with their homework, and more, in a program that has brought the student-athletes to the Westminster school several times a week. "All the kids that have mentors look forward to it. They get so excited about it," eighth-grade math teacher Angela Springer said. "I could say it a million times on how to do it, and the football players say it, and they get it. " Many of the students, in fact, have seen their grades improve with the mentorship, Springer said.

Nearly 2,000 Harford County government employees received a bonus last month, but, time is running out for several thousand educators whose union has rejected County Executive David R. Craig's one-time offer. The dispute pits Craig, who is term-limited and considering a run for higher office, against the county's most powerful and largest union, of which he was once a member. Craig and leaders of the Harford County Education Association say they are still trying to resolve the impasse that has put a damper on his much publicized plan to distribute $11 million from a budget surplus among local employees.

Six elementary schools have been added to the prestigious Maryland list of Blue Ribbon designees after they were recognized as the highest performers and for raising achievement of students from disadvantaged backgrounds. Interim state Superintendent Bernard Sadusky announced Tuesday that six schools from six districts had been selected by the U.S. Department of Education as 2012 Maryland Blue Ribbon Schools. He called the honor "emblematic of the fine instruction taking place throughout our school system.

Amid optimism and national acclaim, the Baltimore City school system and its teachers union signed a landmark contract one year ago, tying teacher pay to performance rather than seniority. Now, some in the system are, understandably, growing frustrated that crucial details remain to be worked out and that the system has repeatedly missed deadlines for doing so. But that is no sign that the two sides should give up. There's really no alternative to making the current agreement work, and if that means school system officials and union leaders have to double down on writing the rules clarifying teachers' responsibilities and rewards under the new contract language, so be it. The city's historic three-year pact was aimed at recognizing the best teachers and giving them financial incentives to boost their students' classroom performance.

Theodore E. "Ted" Thormann Jr., a longtime popular Calvert Hall College High School math teacher, died Nov. 23 of a heart attack at the Towson private school. He was 62 and a resident of Towson's Campus Hills neighborhood. Mr. Thormann, who had heart bypass surgery several years ago, regularly exercised and rode his bicycle. He often would return to school in the evening and work out in the gym or walk the halls for exercise. He went to Calvert Hall on the evening of Nov. 22, and when he did not return home, his wife of 17 years, the former Janice Flynn, a lawyer with the Public Service Commission, became alarmed and called Baltimore County police.

Robert Najewicz and Sharon Dudek, of Perry Hall, announce the engagement of their daughter, Allison Dudek Najewicz, to Byron Nelson White, son of Nelson and Cindy White, of Bel Air. The bride-to-be is a 2005 graduate of Perry Hall High. She has a bachelor's degree in mathematics from The College of Notre Dame of Maryland. She is a math teacher at Stemmers Run Middle in Essex. The prospective groom is a 2004 graduate of C. Milton Wright High School. He has a bachelor's degree in mathematics from North Texas University.

At funeral services for Nathan Krasnopoler held at Sol Levinson and Bros. Funeral Home on Aug. 12, the 20-year-old was remembered by a Johns Hopkins University professor for his "keen and incisive intellect. " Mr. Krasnopoler died Aug. 10 at Gilchrist Center in Columbia from a severe irreversible brain injury that he sustained Feb. 20 after being hit by a motorist while riding his bicycle on West University Parkway near the Hopkins Homewood campus. "Nathan was very bright, very creative and very self-motivated," said Edward R. Scheinerman, professor in the Johns Hopkins University Department of Applied Mathematics and Statistics, who is also vice dean of engineering education at the Whiting School of Engineering.

A group of Owings Mills High teachers is proposing that Baltimore County school system employees take a three-day furlough in order to prevent cutting positions at schools. Guy Pritzker, a math teacher, wrestling coach and 28-year veteran at Owings Mills, said he believes teachers would be willing to teach on furlough days so that students don't suffer. Pritzker sent a letter, with the signatures of 16 other Owings Mills teachers, to school board President Earnest A. Hines and Superintendent Joe A. Hairston.