TCNJ

19 WINTER 2026 JEANETTE CAPRITTI '19 Lawrence Middle School, Lawrenceville When Jeanette Capritti took her seventh graders back to class after an assembly-turned-surprise- celebration, one student confessed his expectations for the morning had been low. "I thought it would be another boring assembly," he said. Boring it was not. Instead, Capritti received the 2025 Milken Family Foundation Educator Award, given to just a few dozen exemplary educators across the country each year. The $25,000 award was a thrill. "My jaw was hanging down in disbelief," she says. But for Capritti, the work unfolding in her classroom every day is the real reward. "Teaching, to me, is the greatest job in the world," she says. "Teachers are the ones who make all other jobs possible. Without teachers, nobody could go to school to become an engineer or a doctor or a lawyer. But more than that, teachers make people see themselves." Capritti's hand is forever raised to help facilitate student success, her fingerprints on everything from the school's summer literacy program and professional development efforts to a genre writing elective she helped create. Determined to empower students through the study of language arts, she works tirelessly to give them "core memories," those moments of self-discovery and academic triumph that will stick with them throughout their lives. For her signature science-fiction unit, Capritti dresses as an alien with glow sticks in her hair, arms students with intergalactic passports, and sets them loose among stations filled with books and puzzles. She breathes life into lessons about inference with a hands-on whodunit that sends them sorting through backpacks brimming with clues to sleuth out a suspect. "I always think, 'How can I make these lessons memorable and engaging?'" she says. "Teachers are the ones who make ALL OTHER JOBS POSSIBLE." Jeanette Capritti '19

• Cover