SANTA ANA : Board Recognizes Teacher’s Efforts

Century High School teacher Shirley Bebereia was honored last week with the Giraffe Award, an honor bestowed five times a year to Santa Ana Unified School District employees who “stick their neck out for education.”

“If we could clone Shirley, it would be an unbelievable world,” said school board President Sal Mendoza. “Santa Ana students are lucky to have a teacher who is making such a difference in our society.”

Bebereia, Orange County’s Teacher of the Year in 1989, formed Santa Ana Volunteer Youth, or SAVVY, in 1982, a community service organization that helps keep youngsters out of gangs and encourages low-income students to look past their own poverty in order to help others.

“Shirley is a teacher who takes the classroom into the community,” said trustee Gerardo Mouet, who nominated Bebereia for the award. “She sees that as we teach reading, writing and arithmetic in our schools, we should add social responsibility as the fourth R.”

As part of their community service work, the 175 members of SAVVY regularly visit local nursing homes and collect food and used clothes for needy classmates and their families.

During the holiday season, the group collects toys and clothes for children living in some of the city’s poorest neighborhoods and provides the families of needy classmates with Thanksgiving dinner.

“The payoff is seeing the looks on the faces of the people who you help,” Bebereia said. “The students have great desire and commitment to do the work and their excitement is contagious.”

SAVVY’s volunteer efforts have earned the group not only local but national attention.

Earlier this year, the group was named by President Bush as a “Daily Point of Light,” a designation recognizing organizations or individuals for successfully addressing urgent social needs through community service. Next month, Bebereia and one of her students will fly to Florida to meet the President and a host of celebrities at Disney World at a gala event honoring groups that have been recognized.

But the official recognition from the school district is especially gratifying, Bebereia said.

“This is the first award from the district so it really means a lot,” she said. “It gives me more credibility and I think opens more doors for me to do even more in the district.”