Wednesday afternoon at the Flagler Auditorium, School Superintendent Janet Valentine, Jill Stirling, the 2010 Flagler County Teacher of the Year, and Aimee Mock, the reigning Employee of the Year, were going through their paces for tonight’s ceremony, rehearsing the names of the 30-some candidates for teacher and employee of the year in 2011.
They stumbled on this: Pignatiello, as in Jim Pignatiello, the chemistry and biology teacher at Flagler Palm Coast High School. Is it Pignatello, PignIatello, PigatIEllo? They shouldn’t have bothered. No one does. It’s hardly ever Pignatiello.
They call him Mr. Pig.
His students do. Parents do. He signs his emails that way. The Social Security Administration probably makes an exception and lets him go with Mr. Pig on his card, too, and of course when the movie is made, starring a whiter Sidney Poitier type, they’ll call him Mr. Pig, too.
Mr. Pig is FPC’s Teacher of the Year, and is therefore in line for being the county’s when the winner is announced tonight at the Flagler Auditorium. The ceremony begins at 6:30, and is open to all.
He has many trademarks, among them the ability to both terrorize and inspire his students with the enormous volume of work sky-is-the-limit expectations he imposes on them. He is especially known for his “Pits of Pigdom,” or something like that: a remaking of Dante’s hell by his own students, who’ve experienced the agony, the defeats, the rising from the dead and the conquest of those rarefied Pig heights. Here he is, explaining it all.
Click on each teacher’s or employee’s name in the table below to go to his or her page.
2011 Flagler County Teachers and Employees of the Year, By School (Click on Each Name to Read the Honoree's Story)
See Also:
- Scoring 7, FPC’s Rowan Littlefield Didn’t Just Conquer the World. He Conquered Pigdom.
- Last Week’s On Point: Your New Year’s Resolutions
- Charlotte Marten’s On Point: Color Splash from Hollingsworth To the Art League
- Video: Christmas Parade in Town Center
- FlaglerLive Welcomes Its New Reporter, Videographer and Anchor
- Dueling Seafoods and Surfers: Video and Photo Gallery
Kevin says
That was very cute! To reach a point of total “pigness” is funny and yet, also a realistic goal made to be more interesting through creative teachings borne from outstanding teachers like him. Good luck to him and all his “piglets.”
He is one case of many where CERTAIN teachers are worthy of pay incentives.
Kelsey Donahue says
Mr. Pig truly is the best teacher I have had in all my years of schooling. Never has a teacher gotten me to think so far outside the box, and look within myself to find the will to learn. At some point, you have to stop fighting what Mr. Pig is trying to teach us to do, and I’ve definitely been struggling back and forth with my will to push myself beyond average. I don’t know any of the other teachers that were up for this award, but Mr. Pig definitely deserved the District Teacher of the Year, and until you sit in his class and experience the Pilgrimage to Pigdom, you will never know what an amazing teacher he truly is. I’m going to miss him when I’m in college and I’m sure every one of my fellow IBers would say the same.