Pa. Teacher of the Year from Abington district

An Abington School District teacher who excels in using technology and stays in touch with his former students for years after they leave his class was named Tuesday as Pennsylvania's Teacher of the Year.

Jeffrey Chou, 35, who is in his 14th year at Highland Elementary School in the Montgomery County district, teaches his students to use Wikis (websites that can be added to by multiple users) and file-sharing in their projects, which they post in podcasts.

He also has a class website with a blog that has links to articles for students to read, and he puts podcasts of difficult lessons on the site so students can listen to them again, he said.

Chou's colleagues benefit from his skills as well - he set up and ran a program to bring them up to speed on technology and on how to use it creatively in the classroom.

"I was in shock," Chou said Tuesday evening. "The other 11 finalists were amazing teachers and leaders in their fields - it is an honor to represent all the teachers" in Pennsylvania.

Chou said he has stayed in touch with former students, sending them letters when they enter high school and when they graduate. He makes up a DVD slide show from their time in his class and gives them letters they wrote to their future selves when they were in sixth grade.

"I want to help them remember the class - how idealistic they were and how they thought they could change the world - to get back in touch with that," he said.

Lillian Sall, one of Chou's students, said he related well to students and motivated them to learn. "Mr. Chou is really great at getting to know his students," the sixth grader said.

Chou also mentors new teachers; has served on the board of the Children's International Summer Village, which organizes summer exchange programs for young people; and was on the board of the Briar Bush Nature Center in Abington.

Chou, who teaches sixth grade most of the time, but taught fifth grade last school year, said in a statement: "Teachers have to be jacks-of-all-trades who are good at passing [along] knowledge, good at teaching techniques, and good at showing our students their endless potential."

In an interview, he said, "Often, when we were going to school, we would have very segmented subjects: art, reading, and math. Now, instead, we work on classes with integrated subject matter, so [students] can see how all these things work together."

At the award ceremony for Chou on Tuesday in Harrisburg, Gov. Rendell said, "I often talk about the unprecedented resources we've provided for education over the past eight years, but the results we've gotten could not have happened without the extraordinary commitment of teachers and others who work on the front lines."

Chou was chosen from among 12 finalists in a process that started last school year. He will represent the state next year in the 2011 national teacher of the year competition. He grew up in Colorado and attended the University of Pennsylvania; he lives in Warminster.

Two other area teachers - Paul Wright from Radnor High School and Michele Pavlov Fowkes from Upper Perkiomen Middle School - were among the finalists.