Back to School: National Teacher of Year inspires local teachers for new year -

Teachers must never be afraid to fail, must own up to their mistakes when they do fail and they must never cease to be learners themselves.

Those lessons formed the core of the challenge 2010 National Teacher of the Year Sarah Brown Wessling issued to Red Clay Consolidated School District teachers at a workshop held Tuesday, Aug. 24 at John Dickinson High School. Wessling, named the nation’s top teacher by President Obama in April, is a 10th through 12th grade English teacher at Johnston High School in Johnston, Iowa.

Wessling’s road to excellence was not without some bumps along the way. Her second year of teaching was actually her hardest, when she almost didn’t come back for the second semester, Wessling said to the host of teachers and paraprofessionals gathered in the auditorium. She decided to ask her students how she could improve her craft. She read honest evaluations that were tough to read, started to cry and crawled under her desk so no one would see her.

Wessling called her mother who perhaps metaphorically, perhaps literally, told her to get up from under the desk.

“I did and this is what good teaching is,” Wessling said. “It’s getting up from under the desk. We all have these days that aren’t perfect. We face our imperfections. We’re not scared of a making a mistake.”

At Johnston High School, one year she taught 20 of the toughest students in school – those who had failed freshman English. Of the 20, only seven would graduate, she said.

“My principal said to another teacher one day standing outside my classroom, ‘Nobody in this building wants to be in that classroom right now,’” Wessling said. “Sometimes, this was even true for me.’”

But Wessling took her list of students and read aloud something she liked about each of these kids.

“If I didn’t hear it and I couldn’t say it, then there was no way they could ever believe it about themselves,” she said.

A young man named Tyler was the ringleader of the class and she learned that this “brilliant, charismatic and angry” young man was an artist. One day, after another argument with his girlfriend put him in a bad mood, Wessling told Tyler to take out his sketchpad and draw until he was ready to join the class. At the end of class, he defiantly pinned his work in the middle of the bulletin board.

Teachers must never be afraid to fail, must own up to their mistakes when they do fail and they must never cease to be learners themselves.

Those lessons formed the core of the challenge 2010 National Teacher of the Year Sarah Brown Wessling issued to Red Clay Consolidated School District teachers at a workshop held Tuesday, Aug. 24 at John Dickinson High School. Wessling, named the nation’s top teacher by President Obama in April, is a 10th through 12th grade English teacher at Johnston High School in Johnston, Iowa.

Wessling’s road to excellence was not without some bumps along the way. Her second year of teaching was actually her hardest, when she almost didn’t come back for the second semester, Wessling said to the host of teachers and paraprofessionals gathered in the auditorium. She decided to ask her students how she could improve her craft. She read honest evaluations that were tough to read, started to cry and crawled under her desk so no one would see her.

Wessling called her mother who perhaps metaphorically, perhaps literally, told her to get up from under the desk.

“I did and this is what good teaching is,” Wessling said. “It’s getting up from under the desk. We all have these days that aren’t perfect. We face our imperfections. We’re not scared of a making a mistake.”

At Johnston High School, one year she taught 20 of the toughest students in school – those who had failed freshman English. Of the 20, only seven would graduate, she said.

“My principal said to another teacher one day standing outside my classroom, ‘Nobody in this building wants to be in that classroom right now,’” Wessling said. “Sometimes, this was even true for me.’”

But Wessling took her list of students and read aloud something she liked about each of these kids.

“If I didn’t hear it and I couldn’t say it, then there was no way they could ever believe it about themselves,” she said.

A young man named Tyler was the ringleader of the class and she learned that this “brilliant, charismatic and angry” young man was an artist. One day, after another argument with his girlfriend put him in a bad mood, Wessling told Tyler to take out his sketchpad and draw until he was ready to join the class. At the end of class, he defiantly pinned his work in the middle of the bulletin board.

The next period of AP students were so impressed by Tyler’s architecture-like drawing, so Wessling told them to write what they felt about the drawing on Post-it notes. Slowly, Tyler realized there was community and safety in Wessling’s classroom. He was one of the seven who came back to visit her for the next two years before graduating.

“When we see the potential that our students cannot see in themselves, we secure a future of hope and promise for them,” she said.

Wessling challenged teachers to think about why their students are learning whatever content is set before them and to come with an answer that better than “because it’s in the book.” Zoom in and zoom out, work toward deep content knowledge, show students the pathway to learning and take intellectual risks.

“Nothing is more powerful than a teacher who is a learner,” Wessling said. “We need to sit next to our students and learn with them. You’ve got to get out from under the desk.”

Red Clay Education Association President Philip Kaplan, a fifth grade teacher at Forest Oak Elementary, said Wessling’s message is one that teachers have to remember throughout the year.

“Every year teachers need to reinvent themselves,” Kaplan said. “Look at last year and see what they did well, see what they need improvement on because students’ needs change every year, don’t they?”

State Rep. Joseph Miro (R- Pike Creek) called Sarah Brown Wessling’s message “an inspiration.” He attended the workshop because he lives in the Red Clay district and is on the House Education Committee.

“Think outside the box and do things that may appear to be controversial but will in fact help students reach that positive outcome that we all want,” said Miro, who retired as a Spanish teacher for the Christina School District in 2001. ““The children of today are 5 percent of the population but they represent 100 percent of the future.”