Kristal Doolin This is a unique time of year. As I write this article, we are in the midst of Thanksgiving and heading toward the Christmas season. Traditionally, this is the time of year when people are most grateful. How ironic it is that the season was prefaced by the release of our latest and most stressful test [...]
Kentucky 2013 Teacher of the Year Kristal Doolin laughs with her 7th-grade language arts class about how misplaced punctuation can change the meaning of a sentence at Corbin Middle School (Corbin Independent).Photo by Amy Wallot, Nov. 8, 2012 “Surreal” — that is the word I found myself saying over and over last month as I stood in the [...]
Kimberly Shearer So this is it — my last column as the 2012 Kentucky Teacher of the Year. I have to admit I delayed the writing of this last column as long as I possibly could, simply because I doubted my ability to squeeze all I’m feeling into words. For starters, I’m overcome with gratitude. I’ve gotten to [...]
In August, Kentucky Teacher of the Year and Boone County High School teacher Kimberly Shearer was invited to speak to the new teachers in her district. The following is the text of her speech: So, I’ve done a lot of traveling this year. As part of my Teacher of the Year experience, I’ve visited Texas, Washington D.C., Georgia [...]
Recently I was asked to be a part of a discussion panel on teacher leadership, and in an attempt to prepare for the panel, I’ve spent this past week reflecting on the idea of leadership itself. I used to think of leadership as a solitary act – that some stand-out individual must somehow transcend the crowd in [...]
Think about the “Like” button on Facebook. With just one push of a button, people are able to communicate a great deal of information. We are able to express ourselves and our opinions. We are able to share in a community and to make connections with others through the similarities we discover. And we are able to evaluate [...]
When she was named the 2012 National Teacher of the Year by President Obama, California English teacher Rebecca Mieliwocki said, “I am not the best teacher in America — there isn’t one. All across the nation there are millions of teachers who do the work that I do, and many do it better.” She’s right. Those of us [...]
Over the past few months, I’ve grown pretty accustomed to phone interviews. I’ve also discovered an interesting phenomenon that typically occurs during these interviews. While I love discussing my teacher colleagues, our collaboration and the instructional practices we’ve found to be successful, interview dialogue almost always seems to take an individualized slant. “Well, yes, but what do YOU [...]
I’ve been spending a lot of time in the 300s section of my school library. As part of my practicum experience for my Rank I in library science, my supervising librarians gave me an assignment to update some of the career titles in our library. As I went through the many outdated career books from the 1990s this [...]
Dear Commissioner, It’s good to be back in the Bluegrass! I just returned from Dallas, where I participated in the Council of Chief State School Officers’ National Teacher of the Year conference. For five days, I worked alongside the state Teachers of the Year from all across the country. It was a remarkable learning experience for me, as [...]