By Linda Conner Lambeck

WESTPORT — The school district’s 2025 “Teacher of the Year” is a librarian — herself a graduate of Westport public schools who helped lead the Staples High School library through the COVID pandemic and push back against efforts to ban controversial books.

Jennifer Cirino, a Staples High School library media specialist and fifth-generation Westport resident, was announced as the winner at the school district’s annual staff convocation Monday at Staples High School. The event took place a day before the start of the 2024-25 academic year Tuesday for students, staff and administrators at the town’s eight public schools.

Cirino will represent Westport schools in a statewide Teacher of the Year selection process later this fall. The state winner will go on to compete at the national level.

Supt. of Schools Thomas Scarice told a standing-room-only auditorium that four previous Westport nominees have gone on to be named the state’s Teacher of the Year.

This year, Cirino was one of eight local finalists, and was selected by a committee of district educators.

Scarice described the selection process as rigorous, adding the nominees “represent what is good in our district.”

Staples Principal Stafford Thomas called Cirino a champion of student rights and credits both her and her co-librarian for collaborating with teachers to create a library that is an engaging and dynamic learning environment.

“I know a good librarian is truly at the heart of a school,” said Thomas.

So does Cirino, who said during her time as a Staples student a special place was the school library. “It was my haven when the rest of the school became overwhelming,” she said.

When she became a teacher, Cirino shifted from being a classroom English teacher and information technology coordinator to school librarian.

She said her goal is to make sure all students visiting the library feel welcome and valued.

“It is not your traditional library,” Cirino said of the Staples library.

During the pandemic, Cirino helped coordinate a series of activities to keep students engaged, including something called Friday Fun Days. She also has organized a Zero Waste Committee at the school.

And two years ago, she helped successfully defend a “Banned Books” display and availability of library books that some in the community challenged. (Read about that controversy here, here and here.)

“Representation matters,” Cirino said. “When students are exposed to books and experiences … they can feel included and that they belong, learn to emphasize and grow into richer human beings. My job, with my co-librarian, Nicole [Moeller], is to make sure those books are available.”

In a letter of recommendation for Cirino’s nomination, kept anonymous, one colleague said she is inspired to be a better person by the librarian.

“When she speaks with a student, she is genuinely interested in what they have to say and is so excited to hear their ideas and move them forward,” the letter stated. “Whether it’s technology or getting ideas for a project, Jenn makes these students feel special. She has created a community that thrives within the library.  Students who might not ordinarily have found their place yet at Staples, find it there.”

Cirino said she has learned that education changes, but teachers are the most important factor to students. She can still rattle off the names of teachers who made a difference in her life in Westport public schools.

As a student, she was a member of the school’s only state championship girls basketball team.

The convocation this year took place two days after teachers reported back to work. 

The date also allowed Scarice to drop his son off to college and see his daughter off to a semester abroad in Italy. One of the superintendent’s children remains at home.

The event also marked Scarice’s fifth address as Westport superintendent to a back-to-school convocation. The first had no in-person audience during the height of the COVID pandemic.

Flash forward to Monday, Scarice told a full Staples auditorium Monday that each school staffer matters.

To drive home the point, he highlighted two Staples High School graduates — one off to Harvard this fall, the other who wants to go into law enforcement — and asked staff members to stand if they taught or interacted with either one. Dozens in the audience rose.

Assistant Supt. John Bayers told the crowd the school district this year has hired 44 new staff members, most of them teachers, and is in the process of filling a handful of remaining vacancies.

“It’s been a busy summer of interviews,” Bayers said.

Five Board of Education members attended the program, including Chair Lee Goldstein, Vice Chair Dorie Hordon, Secretary Neil Phillips, Kevin Christie and Abbie Tolan.

Freelance writer Linda Conner Lambeck, a reporter for more than four decades at the Connecticut Post and other Hearst publications, is a member of the Education Writers Association.