Ridgway receives teacher of the year award
Associate Professor and Director of Secondary Education Angelia Ridgway won this year’s University Teacher of the Year, given by the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese.
“There is no one who deserves the award more,” said Associate Professor and Chair of Teacher Education Beverly Reitsma. “She was a nominee for Teacher of the Year in our department a few years back, so we are happy that she has won this.”
Ridgway was also very excited by the news of her award.
“I was very honored when I first got the news but also very humbled,” Ridgway said. “I am not a person who likes a lot of spotlight on me, since my focus is on the teachers that come into my program and making sure they’re well-prepared to teach when they graduate.”
Ridgway has been with the University of Indianapolis since 2001. She has been teaching Adolescent Development and supervising the student teachers.
She is now the director of secondary programs, advising and teaching students going into middle and high school teaching and is head of the Master of Arts in Teaching program. Ridgway is also a foreign language teacher, mostly focusing in Spanish but also helping prepare her students for any language that they would be teaching after graduation.
“It is not hard for me to see why she has won this [award],” Reitsma said. “Everything she does in her class simply works. Her content is effective. Her courses are in-depth. And she makes sure her students learn everything they need to know, such as how to adapt to the circumstances that come with teaching, and is accommodating herself.”
Reitsma enjoys the way Ridgway models her classroom.
“She does not just tell her students what they need to do; she models the strategies in her classrooms for future teachers,” Reitsma said.
An article Ridgway co-wrote for the Teachers of Color magazine in 2010, Ridgway stressed to students in the MAT program the importance of becoming a lens for students from diverse backgrounds to see the world and cultures within it.
Her advice to prospective teachers looking at her program, or any teaching program, is to remember that it is still a time for students to learn about international cultures.
“The world is becoming more integrated, and it is important for teachers to understand cultural differences in how their students learn and to adapt to teach their class in the best way,” Ridgway said.
She believes that teachers are a big part of how students perceive the world.
“This does not mean accepting every other culture’s way of learning and teaching strictly in that manner,” Ridgway said. “Teachers really are a lens for students to see other ways of perceiving and experiencing the world, and that is what we need right now.”
Reitsma is very proud of Ridgway’s accomplishments.
“As a professor, she is phenomenal. But as a person, she is even better. She is accessible to her students, very open, caring and a dependable person,” Reitsma said. “Overall, I think she is an excellent choice to be the winner.”
