DATE: Friday, March 28, 1997                TAG: 9703280572

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B3   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Education 

SOURCE: BY VANEE VINES, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: PORTSMOUTH                        LENGTH:   45 lines

TOP TEACHER: FAITH IN KIDS INSPIRES THEM

Even when she didn't work as a teacher, Iris Trusso-Relis had a hand in education - during a stint in social work and also through her involvement in the animal-rights movement over the years.

But her love for teaching always kept aiming her toward the classroom.

The district honored Trusso-Relis this week for her efforts to inspire students. A teacher of second-graders at Lakeview Elementary, she is the district's 1997-98 Teacher of the Year as well as its Elementary School Teacher of the Year.

``It's rejuvenating!'' she said in an interview Thursday.

Since her first day as a full-fledged teacher about 15 years ago, Trusso-Relis has known that teaching is the job for her.

She likes the feeling she gets from helping students develop everything from thinking skills to a sense of responsibility, or seeing them gradually embrace her belief that anything's possible with hard work.

An eight-year district veteran, she's known for trying to get the most out of her students by constantly looking for different ways to help them learn when one method might not cut it.

Like anyone else, she has bad days. And sometimes she wonders whether she's making a difference.

But self-doubts, she said, are nothing more than ``motivations in disguise.''

``I never give up. I never quit,'' she said. ``. . . I have a real faith in my children. They believe in themselves because I really believe in them.''

Two of the district's educational centers and all 26 of its schools recommended a Teacher-of-the-Year candidate from among their faculties. A committee then narrowed the field.

Trusso-Relis, 53, is not one to be forced into the pedagogical equivalent of painting by numbers, said Lakeview Principal Isaac Askew.

He also described her as a teacher who's not afraid to do the spade work.

One of her students, Stephanie Carswell, 7, said Trusso-Relis makes school fun.

``When we're learning something, like addition, she tells us the steps one by one,'' Stephanie said. ILLUSTRATION: Trusso-Relis

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