The Ventura County Educators’ Hall of Fame is pleased to announce the inductees for its Class of 2018. The members of the Class of 2018 are as follows:
Deloris Rogers Carn was the kind of leader who not only showed compassion and dedication to her students and staff, she led by an example that has been emulated by some of today’s top educators in Ventura County.
Carn, who retired from the position of Director of Special Projects for the Hueneme School District in 2006, was better known to more students as the principal of E.O. Green Junior High School from 1989 to 2001.
Calling her students “Love Bug,” while issuing instructions—“pick up that piece of trash”—Carn tempered a genuine love and affection for students with tough discipline and standards. She demanded that everyone raise themselves to the highest level they could achieve, as she had.
Carn came to Ventura County in 1981 from Jacksonville, Florida, after a distinguished career as an educator there. She was first assigned to E.O. Green Junior High School as a science and math teacher. An early advocate of STEM—science, technology, engineering and math—Carn made sure every student was learning her subjects, pulling many aside for extra help during lunch, recess or after school whether they wanted the help or not, according to colleague Robin Freeman, currently assistant superintendent of educational services for the Oxnard School District.
Carn’s Ventura County career quickly took off, with a promotion from teacher to assistant principal at E.O. Green, before being appointed principal at Fred L. Williams Elementary School. She returned to E.O. Green in 1989, where she was principal until 2001, when she became the Director of Special Projects for the Hueneme School District.
A graduate of Florida A & M University, Carn went on to earn two masters of sciences degrees in science and supervisory administration respectively. She was active in the Alpha Kappa Alpha
Sorority, founded by four Howard University students who sought to lead others to achievement and success.
Her tenure in Ventura County was marked by those values—achievement and success. E.O. Green in 1992 earned a California Distinguished School Award and a National Blue Ribbon School Award, with special honors in math and science under Carn’s leadership. She made sure all math and science teachers participated in the California Subject Matter Projects–either math or science.
“This provided us with a unified depth of content knowledge and equipped us with effective instructional practices,” said Dr. Vicki Vierra, who is currently math coordinator for the Ventura County Office of Education.
Dr. Roger Rice, deputy superintendent of the Ventura County Office of Education, said Carn refused to accept the “soft bigotry of low expectations,” demanding that students and adults perform at their best. Carn insisted that school personnel be fully involved with the students—from riding buses to cleaning mopping schools to installing the latest instructional software. Driving those demands was a genuine love for students, Dr. Rice said.
Dolores Rogers Carn died in 2013. According to the many who knew her and worked with her, hers was a truly distinguished career and life.
Deloris Carn
Wanda Dziuk
For Mesa Union school students, the highlight of their elementary school education was being assigned to Wanda L. Dziuk’s fourth through eighth grade classes. Students were treated to an intensive look at Japan, while learning about the latest available technology, experiences that have lasted a lifetime.
According to the many recommendations for Dziuk’s induction into the Ventura County Educators’ Hall of Fame, she was the kind of teacher who changed lives with her enthusiasm, dedication and almost prescient approach to teaching.
According to one former student, Tom FitzGerald, himself a retired teacher at Rio Mesa High School, it was Dziuk’s ability to see past his undiagnosed ADHD issues that gave him enough confidence to excel as an educator. He remembers being in Dziuk’s fourth grade class in 1968-69 when his inability to keep up with his classmates academically was “a source of humiliation and shame. I did, however, excel at something I had yet to be recognized for—my athletic ability.” It was Dziuk’s idea to make physical education classes something that could benefit everyone by creating various activities, such as 50-yard dashes, 20-foot long jumps, where they could receive her hand-made blue ribbons. When Tom FitzGerald received a slew of those ribbons, which he keeps to this day, his “self-esteem sky-rocketed.”
Tom FitzGerald is one of three FitzGerald siblings, who also include Brian FitzGerald and Kerry Kelly, who all went on to become educators, inspired by Dziuk.
Others remember Dziuk’s kindness and enthusiasm, which provided a cornerstone to future achievement and accomplishment.
It was for such a fun and unique approach to education that Dziuk was named the 1974 Ventura County Teacher of the Year, an honor that coincided with being named the 1974 Mesa Union Teacher of the Year. These were just a few of the many honors Wanda Dziuk earned during her long career.
Dziuk was awarded her undergraduate degree from Miami University in Ohio in 1956 before going on to pursue 60 hours of post-graduate study from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and California Lutheran University.
She started her teaching career in Long Beach before going to Los Angeles. In 1964, she began to teach fourth through eighth grades at Mesa Union in Somis until her retirement in 1996.
A trailblazer with technology, the students in Wanda Dziuk’s class were introduced to computers early, which gave them an advantage later as technology became more deeply integrated into the classroom.
Various students remember the weeks-long immersion into Japanese culture, with food and homemade futons leaving a life-long impression.
A gifted singer, Wanda Dziuk headed up choirs at her school and was a dedicated volunteer at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Port Hueneme, where she still teaches Sunday school classes and a Bible study courses.
It is her enthusiastic approach to teaching that inspired so many others who nominated her for induction to the Ventura County Educators’ Hall of Fame.
Dressed nattily in a suit and tie each day, Craig Myers made a point of setting an example for students and faculty during his 37 years at Royal High School.
Myers had deep roots at the school, where he taught from its inception in 1968 to his retirement in 2005. According to a short story the English teacher once wrote, he would lie in a furrow of a nearby bean field as a child, dreaming of the future—a future that would unfold atop that plot of land, which would later become Royal High School.
Those who were in Myers’ English class, or who among the players on the men’s varsity basketball he coached, were held to a higher standard. It was a standard that would inspire many of them to become teachers themselves. A master of many subjects, Myers also taught driver’s education, Social Studies, health, physical education and science in addition to taking on responsibilities of being department head in English and Athletic Director at various points in his career. His hard work helped Royal High School garner recognition as a California Distinguished School.
But it was his vast collection of ties, which he always wore with his suit even after dress codes became more relaxed, that became legendary. He would challenge students to notice the small detail of his dress, offering a prize if anyone caught him repeating a tie from the previous day. On his last day of teaching, Myers auctioned off his tie collection and donated the money to charity.
One of his former students, Dan Shuster, who went on to become a colleague, said that Myers belongs on the “Mount Rushmore of Royal High School,” as one of the founding faculty of the school who set standards of excellence that are followed by those who came after him.
Myers was a 1968 graduate of California Lutheran University with a degree in history. He went on to earn his master’s degree in English in 1988 from California State University, Northridge.
In addition to teaching, he was a member of the Simi Valley Unified School District Curriculum Committee and was a 20-year member of the district’s Curriculum Council.
Myers’ passion for his subject, advanced placement English literature and composition, was evident in his classroom, where he had built bookshelves to house thousands of books for his students. Those students, some of whom came back to Royal High School to teach alongside their former teacher, recall a “classy” man who asked for no more from his students than he asked from himself.
Throughout his long career, Myers continued to write poetry and prose that he combined with photos and music to send off each of his colleagues who retired, according to Dan Shuster, math and computer science teacher at Royal High School.
Another colleague, Mike Kohl called Myers, “a master of vocabulary, sentence structure and common sense.”
According to colleague and administrative supervisor Bob LaBelle, Craig Myers IS a “distinguished scholar.”
