Angevine Middle School counselor receives lifetime teaching award
May 21—Transitioning from a grant-funded, district-level position to a school-based job, Boulder Valley counselor Lisa Cech knew she wanted to work in a middle school with a diverse, high-needs population.
She ended up choosing Lafayette's Angevine Middle School, where she's worked as a counselor for 13 years.
"Middle school is the best," she said. "Almost every day, I laugh and I cry. It's super intense for the hard times, but then you have those perfect middle school moments where they are being goofy. It's a pretty cool spot to be."
Cech will be recognized as this year's the Blake Peterson Lifetime Achievement Award recipient at Monday's annual Impact on Education awards ceremony, which is free to attend for all Boulder Valley employees. To register for the event, which is at 6 p.m. at Boulder's Recht Field, go to impactoneducation.org.
Another Boulder Valley teacher, whose name will be announced at Monday's event, will win the early educator award given to a teacher in their first three years of teaching. The Impact awards also honor one employee from each of the district's 56 schools.
The lifetime achievement award was created in 2017 to honor the legacy of Impact's past board chairman, Blake Peterson. The award "celebrates an individual who has, consistently over the course of many years, catalyzed positive change within BVSD, leaving an indelible mark, similar to that of the award's namesake."
Cech has worked in Boulder Valley for about 25 years. Before Angevine, she was the district's Safe and Drug Free Schools coordinator and a lead equity trainer.
At Angevine, counselor Anna Gamble wrote in her nomination letter that Cech provides a "home" at school for students with difficult home lives, along with helping families access basic-needs resources and mental health resources.
"She has made a difference in education, in systems, in our district, for staff, for our community and beyond," Gamble wrote. "But, most importantly, Lisa Cech has made an impact on our students and their lives."
Cech started Angevine's first Gay-Straight Alliance, or GSA, not long after she came to the school. About 10 years ago, she also started the "Ally Cat program," which teaches about 70 students a year to how to intervene in bullying situations and when to ask an adult for help.
"Students can sometimes impact students more than adults can," Cech said.
Along with working with students one-on-one and in groups, she said, a main component of her job is teaching school staff members how trauma impacts student behavior and learning.
She's also served as the co-chairperson for the Angevine Equity Cohort and coordinated staff development sessions on implicit bias, culturally responsive teaching, social and emotional learning, supporting LGBTQ youth and creating a positive classroom climate.
Working as a counselor through the pandemic, she added, she's seeing more anxiety, panic attacks and suicidal thoughts in her students, as well as a lack of social skills.
"There are just more students on edge," she said. "They have a lot of what the adults are feeling about the pandemic and the state of the world, but they are also 11, with the issues of adolescence and friend conflicts."
Coming full circle from her work earlier in her career as an equity trainer, she recently applied to be on the district's equity leadership team to again lead trainings — while continuing to work at Angevine for one more year before retiring.
"I will be back to doing something I'm really passionate about," she said.
