Applause to Culver City Middle School teacher Dee Montealvo for winning the SoCal Honda Dealers Helpful Teacher Award. Dee was one of five teachers in all of Southern California to win this award!! Dee is also a CCFT site reps and member of the district labor-management partnership team. Congratulations on this well-deserved award, which included $5,000 of school supplies courtesy of Honda.
A math teacher at CCMS, Dee left Vietnam with her parents in 1981 as refugee “boat people.”
“We were lucky to be saved by Bernard Kouchner, a French doctor and now diplomat, who founded Doctors Without Borders,” she said. “My parents and I stayed in a refugee camp in Singapore before being sponsored by a church in Saint Joseph, Michigan. My parents found that there would be more opportunities in the Los Angeles area so they found work in the garment industry.”
She grew up in the San Fernando Valley and was the first one in her family to attend college.
“UC Davis was the perfect environment for me because I found supportive friends and professors in the Asian American Studies and Political Science programs,” she said.
Her first two jobs were working as a sushi server and a Sylvan Learning Center Math instructor. “I fell in love with both and now I get to navigate through each of the classroom tables to help serve my students!” she said.
Dee taught in Sacramento, the Bronx, Baltimore City, South Los Angeles, Boyle Heights, and Inglewood before coming to CCUSD and teaching first at Culver Park High School and then at CCMS.
CulverPride
