PUSD Selects Teacher of the Year

The Pasadena Unified School District (PUSD) announced that McKinley School Kindergarten teacher Tina Repetti Renzullo has been named the district’s Teacher of the Year.  Ms. Repetti Renzullo is also PUSD’s nominee for the Los Angeles County Teacher of the Year program, an honors competition that spotlights excellence in public education. If selected as L.A. County teacher of the year, Mrs. Repetti Renzullo will be in contention for regional, state and national honors.

“Congratulations to Ms. Repetti Renzullo for this honor,” said Superintendent Edwin Diaz. “Exceptional teachers like her serve as role models for her students and her colleagues, and I am pleased that she is now eligible for county, state and national recognition.”

Ms. Repetti Renzullo was nominated by her colleagues at various schools, and selected to represent PUSD in the Los Angeles County Teachers of the Year program.  She has taught kindergarten at McKinley K-8 School since 2008 and was named a Pasadena Rotary Teacher of Excellence in 2010.

“It is my desire and my personal goal to foster in my students a love of learning,” said Ms. Repetti Renzullo. “I want them to leave my classroom with a strong desire to seek out information, the skills with which to locate that information, and a life-long passion for learning.  I love learning and I want my students to love it as well.”

An educator for twenty-one years, Ms. Repetti Renzullo spent the first half of her career as a teacher in parochial, private and home schools.  She joined the Pasadena Unified School District in 1999 and has served as a Classroom Teacher, Curriculum Resource Teacher and Literacy Coach at Eugene Field Elementary, and McKinley K-8 School. She also worked at John Muir High School as Literacy Coach and Small Learning Community Design Team Leader for the Freshman Success Academy. She is a highly regarded district trainer for K-12 Language Arts.

She earned an Associate of Arts in Humanities from Pasadena City College, a Bachelor of Arts in Child Development and a K-12 Multiple Subject Teaching Credential from California State University, Los Angeles, and a Master’s in Education from the University of La Verne. 

The L.A. County Office of Education will honor teachers of the year at an awards luncheon on September 20, and will announce the 16 county finalists, who will automatically qualify for state competition and have a chance to participate in the national competition.

The Teachers of the Year Program is the nation’s oldest and most prestigious recognition program to focus public attention on excellence in teaching.  The California Teachers of the Year program, which began in 1972, is part of a national program sponsored by the Council of Chief State School Officers.