Catherine Wiant
Falls Church City Public Schools
Ms. Wiant is an eighth grade English teacher at George Mason Middle School. She began her teaching career in 1967 in Casper, Wyo., teaching seventh grade English at East Junior High School. From 1968 to 1970, Ms. Wiant took time off from teaching and worked as an office manager for a chemical firm in Boulder, Colo. In 1970, she began teaching seventh grade English at South Seneca Central School in the South Seneca school system in upstate New York where she remained for five years. In addition to teaching, Ms. Wiant did graduate research at Athens University and Anatolia College in Thessaloniki, Greece in 1974. In 1975 she researched comparative mythology in Burma, Thailand and Malaysia. From 1975 to 1977, Ms. Wiant developed curriculum on comparative mythologies and origin myths for the Washington International School in Washington, D.C. In 1977, she began performing as a professional storyteller. For nine years she presented shows at various schools in the metropolitan Washington, D.C. area as well as at the Smithsonian Institute and at Wolf Trap's International Children's Festival. In 1986, Ms. Wiant joined the Falls Church Public School system as an elementary gifted education resource teacher at Thomas Jefferson Elementary School. She then became a long-term substitute in sixth grade English and was hired as the school's seventh grade English teacher in 1987, a position she held until 1998 when she assumed her current position. Ms. Wiant received a B.A. degree in literature from San Jose State College in San Jose, Calif. and an M.A. degree from George Mason University in Fairfax, Va.