Minnesota Teacher of the Year

Being the Minnesota Teacher of the Year has been both the most challenging and the most rewarding year I have spent in education. The three months since my last post in this blog have rocketed by, and it’s hard to think that in only three and a half more months there will be a new Minnesota Teacher of the Year.

The only disappointment I have had so far is that I had hoped to be more proactive with the award in reaching out into the educational community to get involved in issues and groups of my choosing. However, with a full teaching workload and an average of two Teacher of the Year engagements, presentations, or speeches each week, I’ve found my plate full in simply reacting to the various invitations and requests that have come my way over the past three months.

This past summer, when I met Neil Witikko, 1997 Minnesota Teacher of the Year, I asked him what surprised him the most during his year as Minnesota Teacher of the Year. He replied that he had been caught off guard by the amount of time it took to prepare his speeches and presentations. I would readily agree with this. I had assumed that I would develop a set of three or four speeches to give during the year, but what I’ve found is that I’ve had such a wide range of audiences that I have only had a couple of occasions where I felt comfortable using a speech from a previous event. I’ve also learned a lot over these past eight months, and my beliefs about education have constantly evolved during this time. This has led to what seems a perpetual tweaking and revising of my messages.

This is not to complain. The experiences I’ve had have been marvelous, varied, and incredibly enriching. I have learned more about myself and education in this past year than I have in the previous sixteen combined.

The good news is that I finally feel like things have settled to the point where I’ve got a library of messages that I can build from to be more efficient in my speech preparations. Over the past two weeks, I’ve started to feel like I’ve got my life under control again, and I look forward to being a bit more proactive with the award over these next three and a half months. I also look forward to chronicling more of the year’s experiences in this blog as the year winds down.