Tega Cay Resident Amber Rice Honored by SUNY Cortland

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Amber Rice

CORTLAND, NY (07/13/2010)(readMedia)-- The SUNY Cortland Alumni Association has named Tega Cay, S.C., resident Amber Larkin Rice a Distinguished Young Alumna. The award will be presented on July 17 during the College's Alumni Reunion Weekend. Rice is a North Carolina schoolteacher who joined 19 outstanding educators on the 2007 national All-USA Teacher Team.

Since 1968, 109 SUNY Cortland graduates have received the Distinguished Alumni Award, the association's highest honor, for their career accomplishments and outstanding service to their community and alma mater, and six have been named Honorary Alumni. Nineteen alumni, including Rice, have been recognized with Distinguished Young Alumni awards.

A SUNY Cortland professor who never taught Rice nominated her for Distinguished Young Alumna after reading about her accomplishments in a 2007 newspaper article listing 20 of the most honored U.S. teachers.

A fourth grade teacher since 2008, Rice has become a national role model for inner-city educators.

USA Today placed her on its 2007 All-USA Teacher Team for transforming the lives of her impoverished, homeless and, in some cases, recent refugee students in Charlotte, North Carolina's largest city. The Rome, N.Y., native who earned her elementary education degree from SUNY Cortland, has been teaching at Billingsville Elementary School and its predecessor, Chantilly Elementary School, since graduation in 2003.

"To say the least, I was blown away by both the award and the creativeness of her teaching," observed SUNY Distinguished Service Professor of History Roger Sipher. "In 2006 all of her students passed the North Carolina End of Grade tests despite the fact that she teaches in the lowest performing school in the district. This despite the fact that she teaches in a school wherein 91 percent of the students receive either a free or a reduced fee lunch. And this despite the fact that 30 percent are English as a second language students and 18 percent are homeless."

USA Today selected Rice (then named Larkin), from among thousands of nominees for the honor. The USA Today article noted that Larkin will do whatever it takes to make her students learn. She created a military camp and battle scene to teach a lesson on the Civil War and transformed her classroom into a "grab and go" style grocery store to teach math. Within her classroom, she tailors her teaching method to the individual student. Quiet students are encouraged to talk and vocal students are given center stage.

"Teaching is rewarding," Rice noted in the article. "I love to see their faces light up when they know they've learned a word or solved a problem."

Growing up in Rome, N.Y., Rice was inspired to join the field of education by her first grade teacher, Karen Kehoe Tagliaferri '86.

"I loved Cortland and the education program was great," said Rice, who still employs the technology research techniques she gained as an education undergraduate. "I feel like everything we did was real world. It wasn't so much theory-based as it was about strategies that you could actually take with you and use."

She earned a master's degree at nearby Pfeiffer University. Since her nomination, Rice has earned the Successful Teacher Administrator Award, reflecting her high academic change in achievement levels of students previously performing below grade level for 2005-06, 2006-07 and 2007-08. She received an individual teacher bonus awarded for exceptional growth on the End of Grade Assessments.

Rice was the subject of a 2008 "Above and Beyond" feature story by CMS TV3. She appears on "The Power of Two," a DVD produced by Marilyn Friend that provides a comprehensive look at co-teaching as part of the foundation of an inclusive, collaborative school. She delivered a presentation on "Classroom Strategies to Motivate Success" in 2008 at the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction's conference on "Raising Achievement Closing the Gap."

In June 2008, she married Stephen Rice, another Rome, N.Y., native teaching fourth grade in the Billingsville School. Their home is in Tega Cay, S.C. They enjoy golfing together and are expecting their first child in late June.

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