Spring Hill's Susan Mahon has been named the state's top German language educator.
By JEFFREY S. SOLOCHEK
Published October 21, 2003
SPRING HILL - Susan Mahon didn't even know she had been nominated for the award.
So imagine the Springstead High School teacher's surprise on Saturday when the Florida Association of Teachers of German announced during a banquet that she was the group's 2003 Educator of the Year.
"It was quite an honor to receive," Mahon said Monday. "It's just so fulfilling to see kids walk into the classroom not speaking a word of German and, at the end of the year, they're required to speak to me for 10 minutes, and they can do it. It's just a miracle."
Inside Room 803 at Springstead, where teens greet visitors with a hearty "willkommen" ("welcome") and a friendly "guten tag" ("good day"), the reaction was satisfaction.
Mahon deserves the honor, said freshman Justin Coggins, who came to the class knowing none of the language but now professes to know "a lot."
"She's the best teacher in the school," Coggins said.
Junior Megan Contreras, taking German for a second year, said Mahon has precise, detailed lessons designed to ensure maximum comprehension.
"I never thought I'd actually learn," she said. "I thought I'd just memorize stuff and get away with it. But in here you can't do that."
Maggie Finnan, also a junior, took German two years from Mahon and remains active in the Florida Association of Students of German. She lauded her teacher as one who cares about students.
"She is the most special woman," Finnan said. "She is so dedicated to her class. With her class, each day is a different day. You learn something different in a different way. . . . I don't know one student who couldn't succeed in her class."
Mahon, 49, came to Springstead in 1995. She had been working as a pediatrics registered nurse at Spring Hill Regional Hospital. Even after beginning her teaching job, she remained at the hospital for two years, just to be sure her decision to teach was the right one.
"I love it," she said. "I love children. . . . The hard part about nursing was, you're seeing sick children. If you don't see the kids get well, or if you have a real sad situation, it's a different kind of stress."
Teaching simply called her, she said.
Mahon, who grew up in Arizona, said she was a nurse training to become a math teacher when she decided to continue her education. So she joined the Army in 1984, learning German at the Presidio in San Francisco as preparation to be an intelligence analyst. She was stationed in Augsburg, Germany, through 1988.
Back in Arizona, she trained with her mentor, Rose Maher, and began seeking teaching jobs. But after moving to Brooksville with her husband, jobs teaching German were few, so she went back to nursing.
A post became vacant at Springstead after about three years, and she jumped at it.
"I've always loved languages," said Mahon, who also speaks Spanish and American Sign Language. "I'm hoping that in our county, we'll be going into the middle schools with German."
- Jeffrey S. Solochek can be reached at 754-6115. Send e-mail to solochek@sptimes.com
