Erich Bergen to host second annual Heart of Education Awards

The Smith Center’s second annual Heart of Education Awards will honor outstanding Clark County School District teachers.

But for host Erich Bergen, who also presided over last year’s inaugural honors, it’s a way “to make up for all the years I was such a terrible student.”

The invitation-only salute, backed by the Rogers Foundation, gets underway with a red-carpet ceremony at 7 p.m. Saturday. During the evening 20 winners will receive cash gifts of $5,000 each, along with a $1,000 donation to each winner’s school, benefiting a program of the winner’s choice.

In addition, the Review-Journal will announce four People’s Choice Award recipients; each winner will receive $2,500.

Entertainment will punctuate the awards ceremony, but Bergen — a regular on CBS’ “Madam Secretary” and “Jersey Boys” star on-screen and during the show’s Las Vegas run and national tour — says “my job is to make sure that the teachers are recognized and to keep that going,” he says during a telephone interview from New York. (He performs Sunday and Monday at The Smith Center’s Cabaret Jazz.)

Although teachers “have to put on a tougher skin” to concentrate on their jobs, they still “become emotionally invested in their students’ lives,” Bergen notes. “For so long they’ve been trying to make kids’ lives better, for very little pay, it does become emotional.”

It’s also emotional for Bergen, who admits to “so much guilt” for his behavior during his school years. In elementary school “I was just a terror,” he admits, “and I BS’d my way through college. I’m making up for a lot.”

At the time, he was so focused on being an actor or singer that anything else seemed a distraction. Now that he is an actor and singer, he knows the importance of being well-rounded, adding that “now, I would kill to go back.”

Before this weekend’s Las Vegas visit, Bergen joined other performers in New York for Monday’s “Gotta Have Faith: A Musical Appreciation of George Michael,” a benefit for the VH1 Save the Music Foundation, which raises money for music education in public schools.

“I don’t understand why education in this country is ever debatable,” he says, citing a friend who teaches in New York City and fields “a lot of questions about what’s going on in the world.”

“We forget how the world looks to people who are a little shorter than us,” Bergen adds. “Teachers take a lot of that burden on.”

Contact Carol Cling at ccling@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0272. Follow @CarolSCling on Twitter.