Minnesota Teacher of the Year

I was just reading a newsletter from Barnett Berry, the president of the Center for Teaching Quality. I came across this powerful line from him, which deserves to be spread far and wide:

“Great teachers for the 21st century do a lot more for students than help them improve on 20th century standardized tests.”

Joy Riggs interviewed the latest three Minnesota Teachers of the Year (Amber Damm, Derek Olson, and Mike Smart) in a recent article published in Minnesota Parent magazine. The article contains a collection of tips from all three of us on how to help your children succeed in school. Enjoy the read, and thanks to Joy for the wonderfully composed piece!

Congratulations to Amber Damm, Minnesota’s newly selected 2009 Teacher of the Year! Amber was chosen out of a field of eleven finalists this weekend to become the 45th Minnesota Teacher of the Year. Amber teaches English and Language Arts to seventh and eighth graders at Clara Barton Open School in Minneapolis. She is a tireless teacher who never gives up on her students, a model practitioner for fostering parental involvement in education, and passionate believer in the power of reading. Amber will start a whirlwind media tour on Monday, with numerous TV and radio appearances throughout the day.

As a footnote to this story, my last official duty as the 2007 Minnesota Teacher of the Year is to sit on the selection committee for choosing the 2009 Minnesota Teacher of the Year. As part of that duty, I got a chance to witness all eleven of the finalists’ interviews this weekend. It’s a remarkable opportunity to hear such talented and dedicated teachers talk about their educational beliefs and classroom practices. Choosing one teacher from the eleven finalists is a daunting task, as any of the finalists would make an outstanding representative for teachers.

Congratulations, Amber!

Congratulations to all the finalists for the Minnesota Teacher of the Year award for 2009. This weekend, May 1 through May 3, the finalists are gathering for a series of interviews and events that will culminate with the selection of the 2009 Minnesota Teacher of the Year on Sunday, May 3.

Good luck to all the finalists in their interviews. For me, this will be the last official function I participate in as the 2007 Minnesota Teacher of the Year. I look forward to meeting and getting to know all the finalists.

The official press release can be read on the Education Minnesota website.

A couple of weeks ago, I posted about the individual “Why I Teach” videos that each of the 2008 Teachers of the Year created in New York City in late September. Recently, the Pearson Foundation took those videos and had a compilation done with some segments from about half the videos.

You can watch the video here. Enjoy.

MinnPost, the Twin Cities’ respected and growing online news site, is running a five-part series this week on segregation in Minnesota’s schools. It’s great to see MinnPost bring education to the forefront of their news coverage. With the economy, energy, the election, and foreign policy dominating news coverage of late, it seems that there has been a dearth of educational coverage.

The MinnPost articles are well written and thought provoking. I’m going to hold off on commenting until I’ve read all five pieces, but they are well worth the time. Here are links to the articles:

Monday: Twin Cities-area schools more segregated than ever

Tuesday: Minority populations in suburbs rise…

Wednesday: The rise of voluntarily segregated schools…

Thursday: State and educators can’t agree…

Friday: A better way to integrate schools…

“I can’t believe it passed!” If I’ve heard this comment once, I’ve heard it a dozen times this week from teachers at Robbinsdale Armstrong High School, where I teach in the mornings. This Tuesday, while most districts saw requests for increased funding get denied, residents in the Robbinsdale school district approved not one, but two school levy referendums to increase funding for schools in the district. The first referendum on the ballot will provide over $7.6 million dollars in critically needed funding for school programs. The second will provide an additional $1.8 million. The funding will allow the district to rehire teachers who lost their jobs last year, restore some of the after-school programs that were eliminated last year, and reduce class sizes from their overflowing levels.

To be honest, I was skeptical leading up to the vote. It was a general election year, meaning that voter turnout would be high. Conventional wisdom says it’s much harder to pass a referendum in such years, as the average voter is reluctant to vote to raise their own taxes. On top of this, it’s easy to imagine how worried voters are about their finances given the economic turmoil of the past two months, with its plummeting stock market, falling house values, and threatening recession. And if that isn’t enough, the district is home to a small yet underhanded “Say No!” movement. Last year this group hired a consultant whose goal is to eliminate public schooling in the United States, they peppered the district with a mailing that included egregiously false information on the day before the 2007 vote, and they even sued the state of Minnesota over its statute that bans factual distortions relating to school referendums. So yes, I had my doubts that passing even one of the referendum questions would be possible.

But as the K-Mart posters of my youth used to say: “People who say it can’t be done are usually interrupted by others doing it.” An active group of concerned residents of School District 281 refused to give in to the impossible. Continue Reading »