Vincent Pienaar • South Africa 
National Cultural Educator of the Year
Math teacher
West Lee Middle ▪ Lee County Public Schools, North Carolina
When the seventh grade studied Africa, Vincent Pienaar made a special presentation about his homeland, South Africa, and created a Web site on South Africa that the students used as a resource. To bring culture alive, Pienaar organized a video conference between West Lee’s seventh grade students and students from his hometown in South Africa.
Pienaar also coordinated a school-wide project to paint a huge world map on the school grounds. Now, students and staff at West Lee Middle School will have a daily reminder of the rich cultural diversity of their school, their country and their world for years to come.
An outstanding ambassador for international education and a positive role model for his students, Pienaar has been an important part of the West Lee Middle School community for five years (he’s now in the second year of his second tour as a VIF teacher). In his own classroom, Pienaar’s math students visit the South Africa corner, which includes maps, photographs, artifacts and books about his native country, as well as a biography about their teacher and a Power Point presentation about South Africa. In the hallway, he translates common phases into Afrikaans – and he has taught students and colleagues how to exchange greetings in his native tongue.