BINGHAMTON, NY (WIVT/WBGH) – This month’s Golden Apple Award Winner is going to a teacher who prioritizes her students’ success over her own. Ani Loew went from aspiring to investigate politics, to teaching it.
Ani Loew is the Law and Government Instructor with BOCES’ New Visions program. New Visions is for college bound seniors who are interested in a career in business, health, engineering, or law and government.
Students go out to local businesses and organizations to work side by side with professionals in their field.
At the start of the year, Mrs. Loew talks with each student about what careers interest them and utilizes her network of connections to establish shadowing opportunities.
Ani Loew says, “Do they want to be in court? Do they want to be working for an elected official? Do they want to work with people, or would they rather be behind the scenes it’s hard to know the answers to those questions unless you have experience.”
Loew received her bachelors in communications and political science from Virginia Tech. After graduating, she got a job as a paralegal in Georgia, but quickly realized it wasn’t what she wanted to do with her career.
The New Visions Law and Government Instructor, Ani Loew says, “I took the day off, and substitute taught for a friend of mine, and I loved it. I walked out to the open lunch, behind a group of kids, was standing in line at Hardees, one of the kids turned around and said, “hey that’s our teacher,” and like the bells went off in my head. Teacher?”
She says she has always had an active teaching style. When she taught at Union Endicott, she says her classes reenacted battles from the Revolutionary War, and made her students recite the preamble of the Constitution.
Now, she goes out into the legal community to establish opportunities for her students.
“Ani Loew says, “So, I go in court, I listen to somebody give a great closing argument, and then I follow them out of the court, introduce myself, and ask if they’d like to participate as a placement in my program. So, the activity has changed, but its still a very active job, I’m running back and forth to the courts and government plaza all the time.”
Students go to their placements two days a week for four weeks. Some of which include the Mayor’s Office, Public Defender’s office, Broome County Court, and Senator Schumer’s Office.
One of her students, Vincent Arlequin says that Mrs. Loew goes above and beyond, and is more than just a teacher. He says that even in the pouring rain, she will hold an umbrella overhead, and walk you to wherever you need to go.
New Visions Law and Government Student Vincent Arlequin says, “We sat and talked for like an hour after class about resumes, which then transferred into stuff going on in my personal life. She like actually cares about you as a person more than just as a student.”
Loew says a big chunk of her job is teaching students how to be professional, in terms of how they dress, speak, and present themselves.
She holds herself to the standard of teaching with integrity, or as she puts it, as if her sons were in the classroom with her.
In Binghamton, Roy Santa Croce, NewsChannel 34
