Teacher of the Year goes to...

At the beginning of the semester, we were given an assignment to write a speech if we won teacher of the year. This is what I came up with:

I am deeply honored to be chosen as teacher of the year. I owe this award to my students. Over the past twenty years I have learned so much from them, and for that I am grateful. They taught me to listen to them, accept them, relate to them and most of all: care about them. There isn’t one specific thing that makes a great teacher; however, some key components are to listen learn, and inspire. John Cattan Dana said it best when he said: “Who dares to teach must never cease to learn.”
We are shaping our next generation of doctors, teachers, and so on. How are students able to discover themselves if we never inspire them? If we never push them? I believe in challenging my students. By challenging, I do not mean I give out more homework or ask them to spend more time practicing, but rather I make my students think. I challenge their opinions and ideas. This makes them think critically and able to support their beliefs. Being able to do this is one of the first steps to self-discovery. Dan Rather once said, “The dream begins with a teacher who believes in you, who tugs and pushes and leads you to the next plateau, sometimes poking you with a sharp stick called ‘truth’.”
This leads me to my next point: never give up on a student. It is so easy to write-off a student when they don’t show up for class, don’t do their work, or worst-of-all: drop-out. As much as we, as teachers, need to challenge our students, we also need to be prepared to be challenged. I have had to deal with students with many temperaments, personalities and diverse home lives. So often we don’t spend enough time getting to know our student, which is key to reaching out to these challenging students. There are so many reasons that a student may not be working hard at school and I try to figure out that reason so that I may make adjustments to better my students’ education.
When I started I barely had any students in my extra-curricular choir. I did; however, have many students in my required choir. It was very apparent who wanted to be there, and who didn’t. It’s important to keep your class fun, engaging and challenging. I did this by assigning research projects, having individual sight-reading test, and then allowing the students to share their favorite music with the class. I also got the parents involved. I realized that so many parents don’t realize the importance of music, and therefore don’t encourage their children to try hard in music. Once I built up the parent group, I noticed a huge difference in the children. They were more prepared, much more excited for performances and the attendance for performances greatly increased which, of course, made them perform better. I am proud to say that I now have multiple extra-curricular choirs that have competed in competitions and have received high marks.
Once again, I need to thank my students and parents for making me a better teacher. I only hope that I have somehow impacted the lives of my students. I close with a quote by Jacques Barzun that has been my inspiration for the past twenty years: “In teaching you cannot see the fruits of a day’s work. It is invisible and remains so, maybe for twenty years.”