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Article published in the Sarasota Herald Tribune, Mar 4, 2007

Sarasota County Teacher Named VFW National Citizenship Teacher of the Year

Pine View School’s Fran Squires is winner of the VFW's citizenship honor

By ANNA SCOTT

anna.scott@heraldtribune.com

SARASOTA -- If Fran Squires lined up her teaching awards, they would stretch at least the length of her third-grade classroom at Pine View School. State's best teacher for gifted students. An FCSS Elementary Teacher of the Year. NCSS Elementary Social Studies Teacher of the Year. State's top teacher of private enterprise.

The list goes on.

On Tuesday, March 6, 2007 in Washington, D.C., Fran Squires was named Veterans of Foreign Wars' National Citizenship Teacher of the Year -- an award that is especially close to her heart.

"This one I did for my dad," said Squires, whose father, Army Staff Sgt. W.W. Hatcher, served in Germany in World War II.

It was his job to box the belongings of dead soldiers to send home to their families.

Squires won the citizenship award partly because her class adopted Army Spc. Matthew Charland and sent him care packages while he served in Iraq in 2005.

Every week, the class wrote letters, sometimes to ask how many push-ups he could do and sometimes just to cheer him on. They sent a class picture, Rice Krispies Treats and, his favorite, pistachios.

They wore his picture around their necks the whole year.

When they said the pledge every morning, they dedicated it to their soldier.

"I really wanted them to feel a connection to him," said Squires, who has been teaching since 1973.

"Growing up, every holiday we recognized our veterans. It was an important part of my life. I hope these things will matter to these kids as they grow up."

Squires spent 15 years as a speech pathologist in schools in Virginia before moving to Sarasota and teaching at Pine View in 1995.

Since then, she has written grants and been awarded $50,000 for classroom projects aimed at increasing student participation in the community.

Her class projects include adopting one of Jungle Gardens' baby flamingos, submitting suggestions for new stamps to the U.S. Postal Service, and starting a classroom business to raise money for children with cancer.

Pine View Principal Steven Largo described Squires in a letter of recommendation as a teacher "with the Midas touch," someone "who can't be ignored, or denied!"

During election seasons, she turned her classroom into a voting center with hand-built voting booths and led the whole school in a mock vote that was realistic enough to involve voter registration cards for each student.

In 2000, she took students to shake hands with both presidential candidates, Al Gore and George W. Bush, when they visited Sarasota-Bradenton International Airport.

After 9/11, she and her students stamped the phrase "Good Will Prevail" on rubber bracelets and sold them, donating the profits to a fund for children whose parents were killed in the terrorist attack.

She and her class sent 500 bracelets to Charland, who said he handed them out to troops.

"A lot of my friends wore them the whole time," said Charland, whose mother, Mary Charland, works at the Herald-Tribune. "Knowing the younger generation still looks up to our troops, even with all the stuff we see on TV, is a really good thing."

He said Squires kept the letters coming: Students wrote to him even when they had a substitute teacher.

Since Charland returned home last year, Squires' class has adopted two more soldiers.

She hopes the experience will imbue more than book smarts.

"I'm a big believer in the importance of community service," Squires said.

"It's not about what they do academically every year, it's the memories they make beyond multiplication, beyond social studies. It's that they had a soldier and they adopted him and took care of him. It gives us something to focus on other than ourselves."

Squires was selected from among about 400 applications nationwide, said Bob O'Neill, commander of the Sarasota VFW post that nominated Squires.

"She's like a mother to everyone," O'Neill said. "This is a big honor."