Community Update

Blaise Messinger, the 2013 Connecticut
Teacher of the Year, will present the lecture, “Be That Teacher,” at 3 p.m. on
Saturday, Nov. 16, in the auditorium at the Center for Medicine, Nursing and
Health Sciences on the North Haven Campus at Quinnipiac University. This event,
sponsored by the School
of Education, is free and open to the public.

Messinger, a former
Hollywood actor who is now a fifth-grade teacher at Woodside Intermediate
School in Cromwell, will discuss his career path and the need for
today’s educators to stay true to the soul of teaching in the face of
heightened pressure and examination from outside forces.

Messinger, who began teaching in Los Angeles in 1998 after many years of
working as an actor, said, “Teaching is pretty much the same job as acting, but
with a tougher audience and a new six-hour show every day.”

He spent six years
teaching at Annandale Elementary, in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Highland
Park, before moving to Connecticut in 2004 to be closer to family.

Messinger said he
was drawn to a career in education after seeing the impact that excellent
teaching had on his son, Ethan, who has autism. Under the tutelage of expert
teachers, Ethan has made great gains, and Messinger realized what an excellent
teacher can do, not just for students, but for their families. It was then that
he realized he wanted to be part of that. He wanted to be able to make a
difference in the life of a child and that child’s family.

“All children are
just aching to learn,” Messinger said.  “They want something to rouse them
out of the ennui and tedium.  The key to unlocking the joy and wonder
inherent in all students begins with the relationship between the teacher and
that child, and the environment created in the classroom to nurture that
bond.” 

Messinger said he
strives to make his classroom come alive with laughter and excitement, and he
feels he is successful when his students go home and say, “Guess what we did in
school today?”

He lives in Cromwell
with his wife, Kimberley, a paraprofessional who works with special needs
children, and his two sons, Ethan and Caleb.  He received a bachelor’s
degree from Brown University and a master of fine arts from the University of
San Diego. 

For more information,
call 203-582-8652.

Quinnipiac
is a private, coeducational, nonsectarian institution located 90 minutes north
of New York City and two hours from Boston. The university enrolls 6,400
full-time undergraduate and 2,300 graduate students in 58 undergraduate and
more than 20 graduate programs of study in its School
of Business and Engineering, School
of Communications, School
of Education, School
of Health Sciences, School
of Law, Frank
H. Netter MD School of Medicine, School
of Nursing and College
of Arts and Sciences. Quinnipiac consistently ranks among the top
regional universities in the North in U.S. News & World Report’s America’s
Best Colleges issue. The 2014 issue of U.S. News & World Report’s America’s
Best Colleges named Quinnipiac as the top up-and-coming school with master’s
programs in the Northern Region. Quinnipiac also is recognized in Princeton
Review’s “The Best 377 Colleges.” The Chronicle of Higher Education has named
Quinnipiac among the “Great Colleges to Work For.” For more information, please
visit www.quinnipiac.edu.
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