Rockville chemistry teacher earns Greenblatt Award

The award comes with a $1,000 prize and a chance at winning the county Teacher of the Year award.

A first-year Montgomery County teacher is also honored each year.

‘‘I really enjoy teaching chemistry,” Martioski-Taylor said. ‘‘There are a lot of demonstrations [that I do] and there are a lot of real-world applications. I have a good time. I have fun with chemistry and I try to make it fun for my students and interesting.”

Martioski-Taylor, who has been teaching at Richard Montgomery for nine years, said she was honored that the school’s administration had nominated her for such a ‘‘prestigious award.”

‘‘And then when they shared with me some of the letters that my students had written, I was really floored,” she said. ‘‘It was really, really nice to know that I had touched some students the way that I had.”

The Marian Greenblatt Education Fund, named for a former member of the Montgomery County Board of Education, has given awards to veteran teachers who have been teaching in the county for at least five years since 1989. The first-year award began in 1997.

Martioski-Taylor found out she had won the award when she was called down to the main office for a telephone call. Thinking perhaps something was wrong, the Germantown resident said she was surprised and delighted to hear Marshal Greenblatt, the founder and president of the Marian Greenblatt Education Fund, on the other end of the line announcing she had won.

‘‘It was really nice to find out from him,” Martioski-Taylor said.

She said she had not always envisioned herself as a teacher. After receiving her bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Framingham State College in Massachusetts, her home state, Martioski-Taylor moved on to Tufts University to earn her master’s degree in chemistry with the intention of earning her Ph.D.

While earning her master’s degree, Martioski-Taylor said she got her first taste of teaching as an assistant in a chemistry class.

‘‘I enjoyed working in the lab, but I missed that social interaction and that’s when I decided just to leave with my master’s in chemistry and get certified to teach chemistry,” she said.

Now, more than a decade into her teaching career and pregnant with her first child, Martioski-Taylor can be found in her classroom entertaining her students with such eccentric experiments as the ‘‘the glowing pickle.”

‘‘I make a pickle light up like a light bulb,” she said. ‘‘You actually send electricity through it and the salt inside the pickle gains that energy and it lights up a yellow color.”

Greenblatt said he dropped in on one of Martioski-Taylor’s experiments a few weeks ago and was impressed by her teaching style.

‘‘She makes chemistry exciting,” he said, adding he was happy to see students eagerly participating in an experiment. ‘‘She was not a distant figure; she was right in there with them.”

Greenblatt described Martioski-Taylor as a ‘‘charming” and ‘‘engaging” teacher and noted he was particularly impressed to hear that she and her students visit Beall Elementary School in Rockville at the end of each school year to work with fourth-grade students.

‘‘It’s important that we get them interested early and show them science can be fun,” he said.

Michael Willard, a Richard Montgomery physics teacher who won a Marian Greenblatt Award in 1999, said the science department is proud of Martioski-Taylor.

‘‘She’s very dedicated to her students and I think that’s a primary reason why she won; just her commitment to her students and her enthusiasm for her subject in chemistry,” he said. ‘‘It’s a great honor and there are only a few teachers in the county who have been recognized that way.”

Moreno E. Carrasco, principal of Richard Montgomery, said he and several others nominated Martioski-Taylor for the award because she is a ‘‘phenomenal teacher.”

‘‘Her students always perform at the top of the charts and we’re very lucky to have her,” he said.