The ruse worked without a hitch, getting JoAnne Hall, the computer teacher at St. Bartholomew Catholic School in Bethesda, outside for the surprise announcement that she was a Golden Apple Award winning teacher. She was heading out for lunch duty anyway.

“The whole school was outside. I didn’t think anything of it, because the whole school was looking for cicadas,” she said, noting how teachers and students had been observing the mysterious insects that had emerged in force that spring throughout the Washington area, including on the school grounds.

But the St. Bartholomew students, teachers, staff, parents and parish priests had assembled outside not to search for cicadas, but to join officials from the Catholic Schools Office of the Archdiocese of Washington in saluting Hall as one of 10 local Catholic school teachers to receive the 2021 Golden Apple Award for teaching excellence and dedication to Catholic education. The annual award is sponsored by the Donahue Family Foundation.

“I was shocked, I was honored,” said Hall, noting that she was honored even to be nominated for the award by parents and teachers.

For the third year in a row, a teacher from St. Bartholomew Catholic School received the Golden Apple Award, with Hall following 2020 recipient Germania Rebaudengo, a middle school religion teacher, eighth grade homeroom teacher, and the second grade math teacher there; and 2019 honoree Kerry Parker, the third grade teacher there.

Praising Hall’s service to the school, Chris Davison, St. Bartholomew’s assistant principal, said in an interview, “She’s an amazing, devoted, hard-working woman. She gets here at 5 in the morning and stays ‘til 6 at night. She’s a wonder. She wears so many hats for our school and does it with a lot of love.”

Davison, whose four children attended the school, joined its staff in 2000, three years after Hall came aboard there. 

St. Bartholomew’s principal, Frank English, likewise praised Hall’s dedication, noting that when he walks his dogs in the Rockville neighborhood where they both live, he often has greeted her as she is heading off before dawn to the school.

“JoAnne Hall does a yeoman’s amount of work here,” he said, adding, “This is a lady who puts the kids in school and her colleagues before herself.”

In addition to teaching computer classes throughout the day to pre-kindergarten through eighth graders at St. Bartholomew School, Hall also managed the before-care and after-care programs there, devised the master schedules for its students and ensured that grades and teachers’ comments were on their report cards, coordinated its standardized testing and child protection training programs, and supervised students in the lunch room and at recess.

“She knows the school inside and out. More importantly, she has a heart that’s incredible,” English said, praising how she cares for the students and teachers there.

In St. Bartholomew School’s yearbook, the principal along with the parish’s pastor, Father Mark Knestout, praised Hall for her quiet leadership, for helping to create “a family atmosphere animated by a genuine love for all of our children,” and for impacting the lives of thousands of families there over the years.

They also highlighted her computer expertise, noting, “Mrs. Hall tirelessly ensures that all computers, laptops and networks are operating and is quick to respond to any technical issue that arises in any given day. You can imagine what a year this has been for her, yet she has tirelessly responded to the challenges and put herself on the frontlines each and every day.”

Father Knestout elaborated on Hall’s impact on St. Bartholomew Catholic School in a letter nominating her for the Golden Apple Award, where he wrote, “During this time, we have seen an incredible shift in the computer sciences and in the role of technology in our world. As our computer teacher, she has been able to adapt and address student readiness, expand access to technology and help foster genuine interest in science and technology to ensure that it becomes a core component of every student’s education. From helping our youngest learners gain the basic technology literacy to exposing our middle school students to programming and computer sciences, she ensures students of all ages have a chance to pursue these opportunities in our school.”

In an interview in her classroom and later while she was supervising students on the playground at recess, Hall said she started to learn computers while working between 1979-84 for Signetics, which made integrated circuits for NASA.

She began teaching computer classes to students at the now-closed St. John Baptist de la Salle School in Chillum in 1989, one year after joining that school’s staff. Since 1997, she has been a computer teacher at St. Bartholomew School.

“I love teaching. I love the excitement kids bring when they learn a new concept,” Hall said, describing how their eyes light up when they learn a new concept or skill, like programming or coding.

Her computer classroom includes 16 Hewlett-Packard ProDesk desktop computers for students. In the corner of the room is one of the three hubs for the school’s computer network system, with a complex array of wires and flashing lights. “If the lights go off, I know we’re in trouble,” she said, laughing.

A shelf in her classroom was decorated with figurines of animals, including a pink flamingo, a panda, a koala and a frog, all using laptop computers. An abacus is also on display, that Hall used when teaching students about the history of computers, from simple counting instruments to the instruments of today. “I add in robotics, artificial intelligence and programming,” she said.

Hall, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, has been at home at the Catholic school, where prayer and faith are part of the fabric of learning there.

“We pray here like any class,” she said, adding that she hopes her students leave her class with a love for God, a love for technology and a love of learning.

“I try to teach them the computer is not just a game toy. It’s a place they can learn, grow and work on a lot of skills,” Hall said.

The veteran teacher said she has appreciated the smaller class sizes and close-knit community at the school.

“I have been here almost 25 years and seen a lot come and go. I stuck here. The pastors have been loving and kind,” she said, adding that the friendships she formed there over the years “make you feel a part of the family.”

Explaining her daily schedule, Hall said, “I come early to prepare and to make sure my classroom is ready, I’m ready, the school is ready. I walk around and turn on the lights.” And she stays later, managing the after-care program. “I make sure everything is good and finished for the day, and I’m ready to go.”

Asked about how she feels about St. Bartholomew’s students, she said, “It’s fun to watch them go from pre-kindergarten to eighth grade, and say, ‘Wow, they sure have changed.’ It’s cool to see how they’ve matured and how they’ve grown.”

Hall and the school community faced a special challenge this past year when Catholic school campuses closed down as a safety precaution during the height of the coronavirus pandemic, and teachers and students alike had to pivot immediately to virtual learning.

She said the school’s staff planned for the transition. She got Chromebooks ready and made sure students had them, and she also offered one-on-one instruction to teachers so they could use Google Meet for their online classes.

“It was all a learning curve,” Hall said, noting how after the schools closed their doors on that Friday in mid-March 2020, by Monday morning, “we were up and running, no problem.”

She noted another reason why things went smoothly was, “The teachers are not afraid to ask for help. We help each other.”

Another project that Hall helped lead at St. Bartholomew School over the years was producing its annual yearbook, which this year on its cover features the school’s Bobcat mascot wearing a facemask, as students and teachers did during the pandemic. Working on her with that project has been Neda Ghassabeh, St. Bartholomew School’s admissions and development director. Ghassabeh, a 1999 graduate of the school who has two children attending there now, took Hall’s computer classes as a student and said “she was always there for us, always supportive.”

“It was kind of the dawn of the Internet,” said Ghassabeh, who remembered Hall teaching students how to get online and use the Internet, how to review websites for accuracy, and lessons about Internet safety. Plus in those classes, she also gained typing and word processing skills. Ghassabeh said when she majored in marketing in college and had to prepare presentations, she was able to draw on the skills she learned in Hall’s computer classes.

Praising her former teacher who became her colleague, the school’s admissions director said Hall “does everything here,” and students and parents alike appreciated not only her teaching, but also the loving care she provided to children before and after school.

“She’s definitely like a grandmother figure for all of us,” she said.

Ghassabeh said Hall’s leadership especially came to the fore during the pandemic and the challenges it presented for students and teachers shifting to online learning. As a colleague, she also learned from Hall, about “the importance of teamwork and keeping cool. She’s never ruffled. That quiet leadership is something we can learn from.”

The Golden Apple Award marked the capstone of JoAnne Hall’s teaching career at St. Bartholomew Catholic School. She let the school community know that this year would be her last there, because in mid-July, she and her husband of 43 years, Glenn Hall, will be moving to Idaho to be close to her daughter Jennifer Stuart and 8-year-old grandson who are moving there. The Halls’ other adult daughter, Paula Trapane, lives in the Salt Lake area and has a baby son.

Hall noted that Jonathan Schnurr, St. Bartholomew’s new computer teacher, was shadowing her the day before. “He comes with a lot of new, fresh ideas,” she said.

The longtime teacher said she is excited to be moving near her family out West, but added, “I’m sad to leave such a great school and community.” 

That feeling is mutual at St. Bartholomew Catholic School, where for the past 24 years, Hall helped students learn how to use computers, watched them before and after school and in the lunchroom and on the playground, helped coordinate their testing and report cards, and helped open the school in the morning and close it at night.

“We’re really going to miss her,” said Davison, the school’s assistant principal.