Sabillasville, Md. – Growing up in today's society is more difficult than ever before and some of the most challenging students need the best teachers. Maryland's Juvenile Services Education System is no exception and blessed to have Maureen Pascual guiding its students at the Victor Cullen Center. A mathematics teacher by trade, Pascual is so much more to her learners as she walks through life helping those students deal with personal trauma and challenges them to be better versions of themselves. Her dedication to building those relationships, even in era of distance learning, has allowed her to become the January 2021 Digital Digital Learning Showcase Recipient. 

"She is completely dedicated to her students' success, responsive to her peers' needs, able to effectively self-advocate to meet her needs around an internal drive that she possesses to provide meaningful, challenging, and motivating instruction to her students," Principal Anna Lisa Nelson shared about Pascual's dedication as she was leader among her peers in consolidating electronic teaching materials into one place as the the Victor Cullen Center transitioned into distance learning. 

Pascual's district, comprised of 13 residential juvenile services  schools throughout Maryland, was faced with the challenge of moving face-to-face instruction to online, streamed instruction to meet the needs of all its students.

"Maureen is extraordinarily organized, practices a keen understanding of instructional pedagogy, has superb intelligence around mathematics and exercises exceptionally motivating relationship-building ...all necessary to "meet" our students individually where they are at enrollment," Nelson indicated. "During in-person classes, Maureen is constantly involved with all students in her class, culling motivation through recognition of every small student success, and always eager to celebrate individual student progress and growth across time."

In addition to her duties as a math teacher, Pascual has been a leader among her peers and the instructional team in online learning. She can often be found creating daily recorded lessons that are streamed to students across the state.

"Maureen's lessons are consistently motivating to students, include multiple and varying short interesting interactive activities, and consistently challenge students," Nelson stated as her duties as a curriculum writer as given her a greater depth of knowledge in her own pedagogy. "Maureen has remained a model to her peers and administration, showing a rare and admirable commitment to our vision and to the development of a challenging and appropriately rigorous course of study for our district's mathematics program.

"Maureen is a quiet soldier. Her calm, controlled, even temper and work pace is the outcome of patience, perseverance and sincere dedication to making a difference in her students' skills, self-esteem and confidence. She clearly contributes long hours and has no fear of failure, always looking for ways to improve and better her strategies. Maureen is a significantly notable member of our school team and our district's team and we are proud to benefit from her influence on our students and our program," Nelson shared.