Lyons Township High School teacher Tiziana “Tiz” Lambert was named to the LaGrange-Brookfield Elementary School District 102 Board of Education last week, replacing Brian Anderson who resigned his position on the board this summer.
Lambert was selected by the school board from a field of eight candidates. She was sworn in Aug. 30 at a special meeting.
The 49-year-old Lambert has lived in LaGrange since 2015 and has taught reading to students with learning disabilities at LTHS for the past 17 years. She has three daughters who all attend Cossitt School in LaGrange.
Lambert has served on the District 102 Committee on Equity and Minority Achievement and has also been active in the Cossitt Parent Teacher Council.
She graduated from Western Illinois University with majors in recreation therapy and parks, recreation and leisure studies and has master’s degrees in special education from University of Illinois at Chicago and in the teaching of reading from Concordia University.
Before beginning her teaching career, Lambert was a substance abuse counselor at long-term residential facility in the Englewood neighborhood of Chicago. She has also worked in the youth psychiatric unit at MacNeal Hospital in Berwyn.
“My passion is education,” Lambert told the Landmark. “I love talking about education. I love getting involved in the schools.”
Lambert said that when the school board vacancy opened up she thought it was a good opportunity to continue to make positive change in the district.
“I think they’re doing a great job, but with every great institution there is always room for growth,” Lambert said. “Just a vision to improve student academics. And my biggest focus is social-emotional learning, making sure that kids have that social-emotional foundation so that the learning can happen.”
School board President Michael Melendez said that all the applicants were well-qualified and it was a difficult decision to choose among the eight, but he said Lambert emerged as a consensus choice. All eight candidates were interviewed by the school board.
“They all performed really well in the interviews, so it took a couple of weeks to deliberate,” Melendez said.
But Lambert was ranked highly by all the members of the school board.
“She was the one who consistently near the top of all of our lists,” Melendez said.
