Ridgway Honored as County Teacher of Year

CREST HAVEN – Erin Ridgway, a 15-year teacher at Glenwood Avenue School, Wildwood won accolades Nov. 24 from freeholders and Interim Executive County Superintendent Dr. Richard Stepura on being named Cape May County Teacher of the Year 2015-16.
Stepura noted that Ridgway, among other achievements, had started a second grade swimming program for children there. “She has the respect and admiration of students, parents and colleagues,” he added, and proclaimed she was an “exceptional educator.”
Superintendent John K. Kummings said he had worked with Ridgway for nine years when he was principal at Glenwood Avenue. He said unless he had an emergency, whenever she came to him with an idea, it was “a good idea, never selfish” and something “that could be sustained.”
“She is a task master,” Kummings added, saying the school was “excited to have her as literacy coach.”
Many of her years were as a second grade teacher, and most of them with students for whom English was a second language, Kummings said. Three years ago, one of her students had an appendectomy. She visited him in the hospital and learned he was refusing to walk, eat or do anything a 6 or 7-year-old would be expected to do.
Ridgway, who planned to stay for 15 minutes stayed for hours, Kummings said. In that time, he ate and walked, which sped up the boy’s recovery.
“It’s amazing what a child will do for a teacher that they will not do for their own mother,” Kummings said.
Ridgway told the board of her early education in Cape May and Lower Cape May Regional schools, after which she graduated from Elizabethtown College and “Made my way back home to Wildwood.”
Admitting she worked with “an amazing staff,” Ridgway said “The fact they were willing to write essays meant the world to me.” When she moved to the county competition “I was floored I had been named Cape May County Teacher of the Year, it brought a great opportunity to Wildwood.”
She attended the New Jersey Education Association convention held in November in Atlantic City where she was one of the presenters. More importantly, she noted, she met officials from the state Department of Education and others in NJEA, working with other county teachers of the year, “It is an amazing experience. We are constantly collaborating with one another for best practices for the school.”
Freeholder Will Morey, who oversees education as one of his departments, said, “You started out here and made the trek back contributing to your community in such a meaningful way.”
Ridgway accepted the framed resolution accompanied by her husband, Joseph and children Kyra and Gavin.