North Providence High School teacher Janine Napolitano, right, is congratulated yesterday after being named a Milken Family Foundation 2007 National Educator Award winner. The $25,000 prize honors exceptional educators across the nation.

The Providence Journal / Bill Murphy

NORTH PROVIDENCE

When Janine Napolitano was 8 years old, she told her parents she wanted to be a teacher.

It was no surprise to her father, Anthony Napolitano, who had already taken note of her passion for books, or her mother, Kathy, who noticed how much she liked visiting libraries. Then, in 1995, Janine landed her first job as a teacher, at North Smithfield High School. Five years later she got a job in her hometown of North Providence, teaching English at the high school, where she now heads the English department and teaches creative writing to 11th and 12th graders.

But neither Napolitano, nor most of the people invited to join Governor Carcieri, state education commissioner Peter McWalters and Robert G. Flanders Jr., the chairman of the Board of Regents for Elementary and Secondary Education, in an assembly yesterday in the school’s auditorium were quite prepared for what was about to transpire.

Under the ruse of coming to celebrate the high school’s continued successes in the areas of accreditation and student test scores, McWalters and then Carcieri made clear their real purpose of the assembly was to honor one of only 50 educators nationwide named by the Milken Family Foundation for its 2007 National Educator Award.

The award comes with a trip to California next spring to attend an awards ceremony, and a cash prize of $25,000.

So secret was the selection process, Napolitano didn’t even know she was nominated.

“To say I’m shocked would be an understatement,” she declared, teary-eyed, as she addressed the assembly. “This is what teachers dream about.”

Such was the secrecy that had surrounded the award that Napolitano’s husband, Kevin Cusati, and her parents only learned about the award only after the ceremony had started. Anthony Napolitano, who works for the Maceroni Funeral Home, says he was called out of a funeral at St. Pius V Church in Providence to receive the news. His wife got the news after turning on her cell phone after a morning Mass at St. Anthony Church and hearing a message from her husband to pick him up. Cusati was on the job at RIPTA, where he schedules transportation for the elderly and disabled, when he got the word that his wife had received an award.

State education officials said yesterday that winners are chosen after a peer and expert review. However, Carcieri offered some clues as to how this North Providence teacher reached to the top.

He observed that Napolitano — who had once been selected by the State Council of Teachers of English as the Rhode Island English Teacher of the Year — is known for “implementing innovative teaching methodologies” and as having a passion for helping all students achieve. He noted she serves on the school’s senior project committee, a key endeavor considering that senior projects are now becoming a key component of the state’s new high school graduation requirements, and that she has been mentoring new English teachers each year in her role as an adjunct professor at Rhode Island College.

She is, the governor quoted one teacher as saying, one of the “most knowledgeable teachers in the school district” to whom even 25-year veterans go to for advice.

Anthony Napolitano, who arrived after the ceremony, said he was not a bit surprised to see his daughter honored.

“When she was 8 years old she told me she wanted to be a teacher,” he said. “She does a wonderful job. It’s incredible how concerned she is for the future of the kids. She loves kids. Even after they graduate, they call on her to come over to her house.”

After attending the old Lymansville Elementary School, Janine Napolitano went on to La Salle Academy and Rhode Island College, where the subject of her master’s thesis was “teaching reluctant learners.”

In an interview after her award, she said she believes one key to success is getting kids to “read for pleasure — not because they have to, but want to.”

In North Providence, she says, students nominate books, helping to compile a “big list” which is eventually whittled down to five — in such categories as fiction, non-fiction, fantasy and “graphic” which are then read by students and teachers alike, one book a month, capped by an afternoon in which members from the community are invited to join with students to talk about the book.

Another part of the literacy effort: making sure that even the teachers who are not formally teaching English are grading their students on the way they write.

With two children — a son, Perry, 7, and a daughter Lucia, 9 months — Napolitano says it goes without saying that she is already reading to her infant daughter and has lots of books for her son to pick up and read.

School officials credit her with helping to make the district’s literacy program a success. But in speaking to students and teachers yesterday, Napolitano said success rests on no one person but on the team of teachers and administrators who “sit together through the ups and downs” trying to do what is best for the students.

“I truly believe that in North Providence we have the greatest students in the world,” she told the assembly. “It is an absolute pleasure to be with you every single day, to laugh with you, to learn with you and share with you. It’s so amazing and a privilege to be a teacher.”

Governor Carcieri warned Mayor Charles Lombardi yesterday that the $25,000 award was for the teacher, not money to be spent by the town. Asked about the money, Napolitano’s husband said knowing his wife, he believes the money will go into a college fund for their children.

rdujardi@projo.com