Within an hour or so after Lisa Lader was named the Aiken County School District's teacher of the year Thursday, her husband Art proudly announced the award on Facebook.

And by early Friday morning, the delighted responses began to pour in from scores of their former German students at Aiken High School, where Art has taught since 1987 and Lisa since 1990.

Christen Cullum, a 1997 AHS graduate, is currently working on a Ph.D. in higher education administration at William and Mary College.

"Frau Lader was a supportive, challenging and special teacher who along with Herr Lader, made each of us fall in love with the German language," Cullum said via e-mail. "I see her influence the most in my life when I see that she opened the door of possibilities for me at an early age -- mastering a foreign language and studying abroad.

Experiencing other cultures changes you and enhances your life; Frau and Herr Lader afforded me that opportunity."

Lisa and Art Lader have been teaching virtually next door to each other for nearly two decades. In a given year, as many as one in six Aiken High School students is taking German from one of them. Art was the district teacher of the year three years ago.

In that same role, Lisa Lader hopes to meet many other educators throughout the Aiken school district during the next year.

"I have always gotten some of my best ideas from other teachers," she said. "I've been teaching for 23 years and I'm still learning every day. I also want to encourage teachers new to the profession and help boost their morale. The statistics are huge for those lost to the profession in the first five years."

Lader can't imagine doing anything else and hopes to continue teaching as long as she can. She remains stunned and honored by the district award.

"It's a once in a career opportunity," she said, "something I never expected would come."

Yet the award didn't surprise Jim Sheehan, a retired educator who most recently coordinated Aiken High's International Baccalaureate program and had three children in Lader's German classes.

In a letter of recommendation to the selection committee, Sheehan cited the performance of Lader's students on Advanced Placement, IB and National German exams. More than a dozen of her students have earned Ph.D.'s, Master's of International Business and many students are living or working abroad.

"Ms. Lader's instruction imparts more than skills to her students," Sheehan wrote. "She is the kind of teacher who cares for the whole student. Her students' performance is due in no small part to the fact that she cares and instills self-confidence in those that she teaches. My youngest son was so inspired by her love of foreign language that he went on to earn his doctorate in German this past May."

A native of Aiken, Lader credits her parents, Robert and Saranel Lader as huge influences for her, encouraging her to find a career that would make her happy. When she decided to enroll in German as an Aiken High freshman, Lader didn't realize she already had discovered that path.

Somewhat surprisingly, the school was offering four years of German in the mid-1970s. Lader's first teachers, Gabriele Lienhard and Bruce Brown, were excellent. In her junior and senior year, the teacher was Tanja Moore, the educator largely credited with popularizing and expanding the German program in 25 years at Aiken High.

Moore was dynamic and ahead of her time, having developed a course in which she had set parameters for the work required to get an A or a B. As she pursued an A, Lader chose a wide variety of reading. She loved Moore, but in high school, one doesn't always realize that even a favorite teacher can be so highly thought of.

When Lader arrived at the University of South Carolina as a freshman German education major, her first professor asked her where she learned German. When Lader mentioned her teacher, the professor just smiled: "Aha, another Tanja Moore product."

"Obviously, Frau Moore had a statewide reputation," Lader said. "She was known by the professors at USC and I was grateful to her all over again."

She and Art got married in 1980 and when Lisa was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to study in Germany for a year, Art gave up an English teaching job to join her. He also began to study German for the trip and by the time they returned, he was fluent and determined to become a teacher of German himself.

Over the next few years, Lisa Lader taught at Lawrence Manning Academy in Manning, Lower Richland High School, Irmo Middle School and North Augusta High School. Art was teaching with Tanja Moore at Aiken High and when Moore retired in 1990, Lisa was thrilled and honored to succeed her. At the next awards day ceremony, the Laders renamed the German award as the Tanja Moore Award.

Their Fulbright experience inspired them to participate in the German American Partnership Program (GAPP). In the current structure, students from Germany visit the City of Aiken and Aiken High every two years in the spring. Then a group of Aiken High students accompany the Laders to Germany for an exchange visit in early summer.

"You can grow from those experiences, learning self-reliance and perseverance," Lader said, "things you never would have learned if you had stayed home."

Such trips impacted lives in unexpected ways. The Laders' daughter, Sarah Nell, accompanied them on a GAPP trip the first time at age five. They never pressured her to choose German as a foreign language. But Sarah Nell did so and is now majoring in German and psychology at USC. In her first semester, her German professor was Dr. Lara Ducate, who was introduced to German herself at -- where else? -- Aiken High.

Karen Bradford Crossan studied with the Laders and later did an USC exchange program in Bamberg, Germany, where she met her husband Vinny. The couple lives in Argentina with their two sons.

Andrew Jones, a 2003 Aiken High graduate, majored in German at The Citadel and spent a year in Germany with his own Fulbright Scholarship and is pursuing a career in the ministry.

"You and Mr. Lader were the first people to introduce the German language and culture to me," Jones wrote in an e-mail to Lisa Lader last Friday. "I remember the German Club Christmas party as one of my favorites memories while in high school. I am grateful to you that you planted a seed some nine years ago that would grow into a great love for

Germanistik and would blossom into a college degree and a Fulbright grant."

In 1998 Jenks Meyer participated in a GAPP trip with the Laders. He stayed with a teenager named Bastian Olberts, who later lived with Jenks and his parents, Dr. Mark and Vicki Meyer, during his own exchange visit. Through a series of letters, Vicki Meyer and Bastian's mother Gisa became friends and visited each other on several occasions.

Lisa Lader said Aiken High has excellent teachers of French and Spanish, and she urges students to study one of them and take it seriously. If they want to travel overseas, the shouldn't be complacent with the idea that most residents of other countries will speak English.

"A foreign language can enrich one's life the way art or music can," she said. "I always tell my kids that the English of the German people is terrific, that they start in the fifth grade. But you can't imagine the different reception in a positive way if you try to speak German there. Germans are really excited and want to practice their English. But they're excited and happy too when you speak their own language."

After so many years as colleagues, Lader and her husband still love what they do. They collaborate on projects and will switch off between German I and II every few years. They go home after school and and continue to share ideas. They complement each other.

Aiken High principal Garen Cofer has worked with Lisa Lader for many years, first when he was an assistant principal there. Her personal characteristics of patience, consideration, and good judgment are great assets to the school, Cofer wrote in his recommendation letter.

"Lisa has the ability to put others first," he wrote. "Her concern for staff and students is known throughout the building. I would consider Lisa the ultimate team player who is always willing to do whatever is asked of her. Her enthusiasm is evident by her... involvement with most of the extracurricular activities. Parents are always eager to share a kind word on Lisa's behalf."

In her application to the teacher of the year selection committee, Lader submitted a philosophy of teaching essay. She has found in her career rewards of all kinds, including joining scores of students on the exchange visits in Germany. She loves the looks on their faces when they realize their knowledge of the language actually works as a communication tool. Lader recalls her own amazement of that experience during her first trip to Germany, and she takes pleasure to see her students share that same experience.

The reward don't have to be momentous. Lader finds it gratifying to hear students craft their own conversations in German, really caring that they use direct objects correctly. They suddenly take pride in presenting their dream houses in German to their classmates.

When German exchange students visit Aiken High, her beginning students will communicate with a "real life German" for the first time. Their excitement sustains and nurtures her, Lader said. She delights in a special education student who masters his numbers and in the genuine pleasure her students enjoy during an activity as simple as a German food day. One of most moving occurrences in her career occurred last spring.

"My husband and I were presented with a bound book by my German V class," Lader said, "full of photographs and memories of what learning German with us at Aiken High has meant to them. I will cherish that book forever."

Contact Rob Novit at rnovit@aikenstandard.com.