First-year Perry Elementary School ESL teacher Robert Benesh has been named the 2015 Teacher of Promise by the Iowa World Language Association (IWLA). Benesh received his honor in Des Moines Friday at the awards luncheon of the annual conference of the IWLA.
“We know we have a great staff at PCS,” Perry Community School District Superintendent Lynn Ubben said of Benesh’s award, “but it’s also nice to be recognized by others.”
Benesh earned a Masters of Arts in Teaching degree from the University of Iowa, with endorsements in ESL and Japanese. He was described by one of his former professors as “inquisitive, thoughtful, iconoclastic, and sensitive to the needs of his students.”
Benesh’s path to a career teaching English as a second language (ELS) began with Japanese.
“I began to look at the world around me differently,” Perry’s Teacher of Promise said. “Information and ideas I used to take at face value had taken on a new level of complexity as I learned that values and beliefs are a part of culture and that every person in the world has a unique and equally valid perspective. I knew then that I never wanted to stop learning language.”
Benesh’s broadened view and multicultural perspective eventually led him to the Perry Elementary School, where he is “a great benefit to the students and a prime example of the strength of Perry’s schools,” said Ubben.
The IWLA represents more than 1,200 world language educators across Iowa. The association works to advance the worldwide mission of education in world languages, literatures and cultures. The ILWA promotes language curricula, from primary to post-secondary levels, that enable students to become proficient in the target language and opens the door to multilingual interaction with other cultures. More information can be found at the Iowa World Language Association website.
