Spanish teacher, swim coach and 54-year educator: Meet DeLand High's Jeanne Jendrzejewski
DELAND — Teaching today is a lot different from when Jeanne Jendrzejewski (Pronounced Yen-jay-ev-ski) started as a 20-year-old student teacher in 1969.
The DeLand High School Spanish teacher and swim coach says the technology and politics around education have changed, of course, but it’s clear that her love for teaching hasn’t.
When other teachers say, “Thank God tomorrow’s Friday,” she doesn’t feel that way at all.
When the weekend rolls around, she loves to plan her lessons.
And when the summer comes, Jendrzejewski gets bored because she's not teaching.
'A wonderful year': After undefeated regular season, DeLand swim surges into regionals
Internet access coming: Volusia School Board contributes $2 million to expand broadband access in county
Kindergarteners learning Spanish?: Take a look inside Volusia Schools' dual language classes
For her dedication to teaching, the 74-year-old was recently honored with the Florida Foreign Language Association’s Irving Wershow Award for Lifetime Achievement. Having taught for over 54 years, she said learning and practicing new methods is one of the reasons she still loves to teach well past retirement age — and M&M’s help keep her going, too.
Jendrzejewski, called "Ms. J" for short, grew up in New Jersey. She was very shy and would faint when she had to stand in front of the class in high school, she said.
“I hated getting in front of people. But I loved Spanish so much — and I don't know why I loved Spanish — but I loved it so much that I just wanted to teach it," she said from her desk last week. “I think if you have a passion for something, you're going to do it and get over whatever is keeping you from doing it.”
Growing a love for Spanish
Jendrzejewski’s first exposure to Spanish was seeing magazines titled Selecciones (Spanish Reader’s Digest) in the grocery store when she was 7 years old.
“My mother would buy it for me because I bugged her, and then I would read it out loud,” she said. “I had no idea how to pronounce Spanish, how to speak Spanish, and I had no idea what I was reading, but I loved it, and I read it and read it and read it.”
Jendrzejewski took Spanish in high school and chose to pursue it in college, earning her degree in Spanish and reading with a minor in French from the University of Southern Connecticut. She also studied at the University of Rhode Island for two years and the University of Guadalajara in Mexico for a period. She completed her master’s and specialist degrees at Louisiana State University and also taught at the college.
Her first teaching role, though, was at an all-Black middle school in Connecticut in 1969 that was starting to bring in white teachers and desegregate. The experience was an eye-opener culturally and educationally, she said.
“I think it really helped me. I was very young, and my supervisor said to me — I thought I did great — and her words to me were at the end of the year, ‘It could have been better.’ I will never forget that. It made me cry,“ Jendrzejewski said. “So I decided that I can learn, I'll learn every year. I'm still learning.”
Part of Jendrzejewski’s philosophy was to experience what she taught, so when she felt like she didn’t know Spanish well enough, she traveled to Mexico to immerse herself in the language.
After teaching in Louisiana for nearly four decades, she moved to Florida and couldn’t understand her Puerto Rican students' accents, so she went to Puerto Rico to talk to people and listen to the language.
And when two students in Louisiana asked if she would coach their swim team despite having no competitive experience, she took courses and joined a Masters Swimming group.
“You can never teach somebody if you haven't had to try to learn it yourself,” she said.
Jendrzejewski also a successful swim coach and grandmother figure
Jendrzejewski has been named The News-Journal's Coach of the Year multiple times and led the girls team to an undefeated season last year.
DeLand High Principal Michael DeGirolmo noted at a recent school board meeting that “Coach J” is a special person at the school and arrives so early he had to give her a gate key.
“I'm more of a motivator than a technique person. But, you can’t falsely motivate,” Jendrzejewski said. “(The swimmers) knew I loved what I was doing and knew I cared about them, the same as these (Spanish students).”
Jendrzejewski’s students in the advanced International Baccalaureate Spanish classes have had a 100% pass rate for the past 25 years, which goes back to her time teaching in Louisiana, where she is also in the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame for her swim coach contributions. She has taught in Volusia County for over 15 years.
On top of teaching and coaching, she sponsors the Spanish Honor Society, where 50 students partake in community activities like reading to students in Pierson.
“Whenever you have a teacher who cares, it makes you want to do better for them because you know that your effort is seen," Emmy Miles, an IB Spanish student and swim team captain, said. “It makes us want to learn from her to impress her but also just to show her that we care about her as much as she cares about us.”
Miles says that while “Swim J” and “Teacher J” are different people, they come from the same place of caring and being tough on them to improve. She says Jendrzejewski always tracks their times and is excited for them no matter how they performed.
Senior Charles Blair described Jendrzejewski as genuine, energetic and “muy inteligente."
“She takes time out of her day after school, like hours after school, to let you make up work, and she basically has a whole other class outside of class,” Blair said.
The students view Jendrzejewski as a grandmother figure in a way, and she admits to playing the grandma card if they're misbehaving, asking, “Would you act like that in front of your grandmother?”
Teacher's passion for education inspires family and students
Beyond that, Jendrzejewski has many teaching techniques, as her passion is methodology.
She likes to have the students describe pictures and videos to learn the language. She also understands there are different ways to motivate and talk to students, as well as provide choices. One thing is certain, though: She isn't using the same materials from last year.
“I throw everything out (at the end of the year),” she said. "Some teachers use the same lessons and the same tests every year. How boring. I make up everything new.”
Jendrzejewski has even started a book on teaching world languages in the 21st century because of how much it differs from when she first started and how much technology has changed the field.
With permission from parents, she may text students out of the blue in Spanish after school to help them think in the language, for example.
Two of Jendrzejewski's former students even moved to Spanish-speaking countries after taking her classes. Five or six more are diplomats, and others continue to study the language.
She’s also inspired her daughter, who teaches at Pierson Elementary, and her granddaughter plans to teach as well.
Jendrzejewski says she considered retiring at 75 years old and 55 years of teaching in a few months but decided she has a few more years in her.
“Every year, she says she's going to retire,” Miles said. “And every year, we come to her on knees and beg her not to so she can stay with us.”
But given how much Jendrzejewski loves teaching, she’s not too hard to convince.
Contact reporter Danielle Johnson at djohnson@gannett.com.
This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: DeLand Spanish teacher Jeanne Jendrzejewski has taught for 54 years
