2008: Robert Bowbeer

 

As long as Robert Lee Bowbeer can remember, he has always wanted to be a teacher. Robert pretended he was a teacher even before he began attending before his then imaginary students. Robert is a product of the Detroit Public Schools where he attended Leslie Elementary School and Frank Cody Senior High School on Detroit’s west side. Robert attended Wayne State University where he earned Bachelors and Masters Degrees, majoring in Spanish and English. He took advanced classes toward a PHD at both Michigan State University and Purdue University.

Robert’s formal teaching career began at Wayne State, when, after teaching Spanish as a graduate assistant in the Romance and Germanic Language Department, he was hired to teach at the Instructor level for WSU for three additional years. It was at that time that Robert had a student text edition of Alfonso Sastre’s Muerte en el barrio published along with his dear friend and colleague Gladys Scheri. The text was used for many years at colleges and secondary schools as a supplementary higher level language reader.

Robert’s next position took him to the western edge of Michigan where he taught English andSpanish at Ludington Senior High School for a number of years. Robert eventually had the title of Coordinator of English and Foreign Language for the junior and senior high schools until the time that he left in 1987. Robert decided that he wanted to “come home” to the big city in and around Detroit.

Robert has been teaching Spanish for Detroit Country Day School since his return to the area in 1987. He has taught all levels of language, has been the department chairperson and is known at DCDS as “señor, señor Bow-cerveza,” El “Terror” and even the misnomer of “El Toro” as well as Mr. Bowbeer. Robert has also kept his university ties open by serving as an adjunct professor of Spanish at Wayne State and University of Michigan-Dearborn.

Robert attended the annual MFLA meetings for several years before he became a committee chair. Mrs. Jackie Moase-Burke wanted Robert to take on the position of Quality Control and Pre-Registration Chair several years back and he remains in that position for MIWLA now. Robert remarks, “This is a wonderful organization that promotes the teaching of several world languages, and I have made many friends throughout my tenure.”

Outside of the classroom Robert enjoys singing for the Farmington Community Chorus and the Orchard United reading in his spare time and visiting the Windsor Casino with his Canadian cousin Cheryl Drouillard.

Robert has one older brother who lives in Ann Arbor with his wife, two children, and three grandchildren. Robert has two “adopted nieces” Alyssa and Abby Arseneau from his dear DCDS colleague Ross and his wife Karen. Alyssa is majoring in education at MSU. The “loves of Robert’s life” are Demi, Jacob, and Tessia Schoenherr ‘keep me young’ as do my students and colleagues at Detroit Country Day School in Beverly Hills, Michigan.”

better, best, never let it rest, until your good is better and your better best,” remains his philosophy on teaching to this day.

Previous Recipients

2007 Flora María Ciccone Quintanilla

2006 Cindy Kendall

2005 Marge Mandl

2004 John Sanford “Sandy” Dugan

2003 Susan Knight

2002 Emily Serafa Manschot

2001 Jackie Moase-Burke

2000 Donald Riddering

1999 Tom Lovik

1998 Gisela Moffit

1997 Anne G. Nerenz

1996 Charles H. Ahnert

1996 Barbette Kitchen

1995 Ruth Moltz

1994 Dianne Mahalak

1994 Alice Herman

1993 Sarah Juntune

1992 Claude-Marie Baldwin

1991 JoAnne Wilson

1990 Emily Spinelli

1989 George Mansour

1988 Barbara Ort-Smith