Globe-trotter Teacher of the Year still calls Brick home

COLLEEN LUTOLF Barbara Godbold has been named Ocean County's Teacher of the Year for 2006. Godbold now competes with the state's 20 other county picks for New Jersey Teacher of the Year, to be chosen in December. DANIELLE MEDINA

Correspondent

BRICK - Forty-two years after first stepping into a classroom, Barbara Godbold is not quite ready to close the book on her teaching career.

"I really do love my job," said Godbold, an English teacher at Brick Township Memorial High School (BMHS) for the last 26 years.

Godbold was recently awarded for her lifelong love of teaching when, for the first time in her career, she was selected as Teacher of the Year for BMHS, Brick Township and Ocean County.

"I believe I was recognized for my consistency of performance throughout the years," Godbold said of her Teacher of the Year trifecta. "I never felt I burned out or rusted out."

For Godbold, who will go on to compete in the statewide Teacher of the Year competition, teaching still presents many challenges.

"Teachers have to be more creative, dynamic and stimulating than they did years ago," Godbold said. "You have to be an actor or an actress in front of them."

Students today live in a world where their senses are so bombarded by the media and technology that keeping them engaged can be difficult, Godbold said.

"I try to make the books I assign relevant to the contemporary world, and I try to relate them to things they are learning in history or science," she said.

Born in Maryland, Godbold has resided in Brick since she was in the third grade. She graduated from St. Rose High School in Belmar, which she attended with Lanes Mill Elementary School Teacher of the Year Elizabeth Smith.

She double-majored in history and English as an undergraduate before earning her master's degree in Russian history from Montclair State University. Her doctorate in social studies is from Rutgers University.

Godbold began teaching in Brick in 1964 at what was then known as Upper Elementary School and then moved onto Lake Riviera Middle School and Brick Township High School, before settling in at BMHS.

While her roots are firmly planted in Brick, Godbold has managed to travel to 50 countries on six different continents.

A self-described Anglophile, Godbold crossed the Atlantic to England 38 times, where she studied at Cambridge University on two of those occasions.

While she's been everywhere from Egypt to Australia to India to Venezuela, it's the one place that she can't travel to during her summer break that might bring her teaching career to a close in the near future.

"I want to go to the seventh continent, Antarctica, and I can only go there in January or February," Godbold said.

During a ceremony on June 8, Superintendent Thomas L. Seidenberger and the Brick Board of Education recognized the achievements of Godbold and the teachers of the year from the district's 11 other schools.

Those teachers are:

Donna Whitman, special education teacher, Brick Community Primary Learning Center; Nancy Evans, EXCEL teacher, Drum Point Elementary School; Mary Lynn Koch, special education teacher, Emma Havens Young Elementary School; Bonnie Giles, fourth-grade teacher, Herbertsville Elementary School; Elizabeth Smith, fourth-grade teacher, Lanes Mill Elementary School; Kathleen Matsutani, fourth-grade teacher, Midstreams Elementary School; Debra Thomas, first-grade teacher, Osbornville Elementary School; Patricia Farnkopf, special education teacher, Veterans Memorial Elementary School; Gail Kinney, special education teacher, Lake Riviera Middle School; Lorraine Henriques, seventh-grade teacher, Veterans Memorial Middle School; Patricia Griggs, English teacher, Brick Township High School.