PA 2019 Teacher of the Year

Last week, I was selected to represent the teachers of Pennsylvania as the 2019 Pennsylvania Teacher of the Year. I am incredibly honored and grateful for this commission.

I am especially grateful to have gotten to know the other finalists, who are gifted, devoted educators: Spring Grove Area School District’s Brian Hastings; Bethlehem Area School District’s Amber Chiafulio; Pennridge School District’s Kenneth Ehrmann; Hazleton Area School District’s Ann Franzosa; Northern Tioga School District’s Wade Owlett; Bellefonte Area School District’s Myken Poorman; School District of Philadelphia’s Jayda Pugliese; Titusville Area School District’s Uriah Sampson; Penn Manor School District’s Maria Vita; and Freedom Area School District’s Brian Wargo.

I will spend the upcoming year traveling the state, advocating for the humanities and the qualities that make us more thoughtful, civil, and human. Below are my remarks from the ceremony last week.

We’ve all heard that teaching is the profession that creates all other professions, and this is of course true. I’d like to go a step further than that. Teaching is the profession that creates the very character of our culture. Teaching is the profession that creates the fabric of our discourse as a nation. Teaching is the profession that creates the conscience of our democracy.

Education is the key to all growth, not just in the knowledge of our world and its workings, but of ourselves—our deepest, most personal understanding of what it means to be a human being living with other human beings. As educators, we must never lose sight of this—that we are educating not just minds, but whole people.

We are not mass-producing proficient test takers to be released into a factory-style workplace; we are nurturing human beings who will enter a world of jobs that haven’t been invented yet and a world of problems that we can only glimpse at the present time. The qualities most needed for that world will be human ones—qualities like curiosity, creativity, initiative, and empathy.

We must make space for students to be active thinkers and creators. We must make space for them to connect with each other and with their communities. We must make space for them to learn to understand whatever it is they perceive as “the other.” We must make space for them to find their authentic voices. And when they do, we must support them in their activism.

It is true that the knowledge and skills we teach children will shape our world. But it is more true that the creativity, curiosity, courage, and compassion we nurture in them will save our world.

I look forward to the upcoming year with enthusiasm, purpose, and gratitude.