December 21, 2006 :: No. 104

A first-grade teacher whose professional goal is “to learn new innovative and exciting ways to teach emergent literacy” is the 2006-2007 winner of the Jean Carolyn Brenneman Memorial Scholarship, a Cal State Fullerton award honoring the late educator who taught for more than 30 years at various elementary schools in Canyon Country in the Sulfur Springs School District.
           
Christina Del Real of Costa Mesa was presented the scholarship at recent ceremonies hosted by Cal State Fullerton’s College of Education. A full-time teacher, Del Real is also a graduate student pursuing a master’s degree in education. In addition, she seeks to earn a Reading/Language Arts Specialist Credential.

Del Real is a teacher at California Elementary School in Costa Mesa.
The scholarship was established in 2003 by friends and family of the late educator to encourage a graduate student in the field of early elementary education to continue the quest of teaching children to read, in the spirit of the late teacher and reading specialist who introduced hundreds of children to the joys of reading.

When Brenneman retired in the mid-1990s, a former fifth-grade student who became an attorney wrote to her: “ . . . it is my wish that you retire with the knowledge that like a parent, your legacy lives not only in the children whose lives you touched, but in the world which is a finer place because of your work.”
“Christina is a prime example of the outstanding elementary school teachers who are enrolled in our master’s program,” said Claire Cavallaro, dean of the CSUF College of Education. “These hard-working individuals are pursuing graduate studies that will help sharpen their skills in the classroom and benefit future generations of children.

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