Distinguished Faculty Award
2010-2011
Kathy Williams-Buttari
This year’s recipient of the Distinguished Faculty Award is an experienced, challenging, innovative, and caring educator who creates a culture of inclusion that focuses on each student’s ability and self-awareness. By her words and deeds, she exemplifies her belief that a teacher should treat each student individually and not assume that every child is the same. She refuses to let her students believe that they are incapable of completing any given task when called upon. In the words of one of her colleagues, she continually displays devotion, creativity, enthusiasm, and undying belief in her students.
One colleague states that “she is an extraordinarily hard working member of our teaching staff, but she always find the time to help a colleague in need of her expertise or a student in need of her compassion.” As one of Parsippany High School’s most admired special education teachers, Kathy Williams-Buttari has had a positive influence on the lives of hundreds of Parsippany’s young people. Her colleagues describe her as a true professional who is a skilled and incredibly dedicated instructor.
One of her students, who is now one of her colleagues, credits her with giving him a passion for learning. He says that she allowed him to experience literature and learning in her class and that she could make something difficult seem so simple. He says she helped him learn to believe in himself and that she was his inspiration to become a special education teacher.
Over her career at Parsippany High, she has worked with students with special needs as well as those with a wide array of learning disabilities in virtually every subject area. In the last few years, Kathy successfully made the transition from resource teacher to the facilitator of the district’s high school Multiply Disabled (or MD) Program at PHS. She approached the challenge with vigor and looked for new and creative ways to make the program successful for her students.
Kathy collaborated with then Assistant Principal Denis Mulroony on re-opening the PHS school store to provide her students with professional training and work experience. Once the store was opened, Kathy and her students worked diligently to stock shelves, catalog the inventory, create advertisements, design new products, and to serve as employees by helping students and ringing up purchases.
She has also worked hard to develop her students’ social skills. Out of this goal came the Peer Buddies Program, a program that pairs general education students with their MD counterparts, establishing the students as equals, to complete activities and projects as partners and friends. In this way, Kathy is fostering learning and acceptance among all of the students in the PHS school community. This program has had such a positive impact on students that some PHS alumni, who began as peer buddies, were so influenced by her and her students that they applied to the district’s Target Teach Program and are now studying special education in college.
Kathy has recently worked with the PHS stage craft teacher and together they have helped the students in the MD classes build sets and put on performances at Northvail and Lake Parsippany Elementary Schools. Most recently, in her role of transitioning students from school to work, she has been working with a local restaurant owner to allow her students to gain hands-on experience in an authentic working environment.
Recognizing that her students are young adults, Kathy has made special arrangements for her students to attend dances with their peers. With their peer mentors, several of her students have attended the Junior Dinner and Senior Prom. After she had arranged individual transportation for her students, Kathy was there, chaperoning the events and glowing in the excitement of witnessing these teenagers getting to do things that every teenager has the opportunity to do. Last year, with the Parsippany Chapter of the Kiwanis Club, she helped to plan a Winter Ball specifically geared to the children in the community with special needs, who may not be able to attend a dance with their peers. It was a huge success.
Lastly, Kathy modifies the curriculum constantly to maintain the high standards we pride ourselves in our district. For example, she connects basic math skills to the exchange of money. In the school store, she connected math with developing social skills, such as making eye contact and speaking with the customer. Her students read versions of classic novels, and they study Shakespeare. She believes that Shakespeare is a study in what it is to be human, which her students deserve as much as everyone else.
As one of her colleagues stated, the Parsippany-Troy Hills School District and community is truly blessed to have an educator who will lead us into the future with such talent and grace. Kathy has displayed the caring, dedication, and professionalism that are the hallmarks of a master teacher.
Kathy Williams-Buttari, for your dedication to your students, your professionalism, your commitment to the school and community, and the inspiration you have provided to your students and colleagues, on behalf of the Board of Education, it is my great honor to present you with the “Distinguished Faculty Award” for 2011.