- Missy Testerman, a 2nd grade trainer from Tennessee, has been named the 2024 National Teacher of the Year.
- Testerman obtained the award after making a curriculum utilizing a various array of well-known Americans that blends literacy and social research.
- She will spend a 12 months touring the nation as a trainer ambassador, encouraging fellow educators to advocate for his or her college students.
When Ali Aglan joined Missy Testerman’s 2nd grade class, his household had simply moved from Egypt to rural East Tennessee, the place his mother and father now run an Italian restaurant. Coming residence from college someday within the city of Rogersville, he informed his mom that nobody would discuss to him. “He said, ‘I have no friends there.’ He was crying. It broke my heart,” Rabab Aglan mentioned.
So she referred to as the trainer. “I do not know what she did, however just a few days later he got here residence and mentioned, ‘Now I have a lot of friends.'”
Officials announced Wednesday that Testerman has been named the 2024 National Teacher of the Year. Those who know Testerman say that’s no wonder, having become familiar with the kind of magic she works in the classroom each day.
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Testerman has a special affinity for children from other cultures who comprise just a fraction of the 650 students at the pre-K-8 Rogersville City School. That is why, after 30 years of teaching 1st and 2nd grade, Testerman got an endorsement to teach English as a second language in 2022.
Second grade teacher Missy Testerman, who teaches English as a second language, works with students at the Rogersville City School on March 13, 2024, in Rogersville, Tennessee. Testerman has been named the 2024 National Teacher of the Year. (Tennessee Department of Education via AP)
Ali Aglan is now a senior in high school sorting through college offers, but Testerman is still helping the family. His sister Jasmen is now Testerman’s ESL scholar.
On Wednesday, the Council of Chief State School Officers introduced that Testerman was chosen to obtain the nationwide title from among the many state lecturers of the 12 months. She will spend a 12 months touring the nation as a trainer ambassador, urging different lecturers to turn out to be robust advocates for his or her college students and fellow educators.
Testerman mentioned in her finalist utility that it appears at instances that state legislatures throughout the nation are passing legal guidelines that don’t handle precise issues in schooling.
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“Schools had to hire someone to scan every book in the building under the guise that pornography is lurking in a kindergarten classroom, yet we do not have funding to hire a behaviorist to help with the kindergarteners who are disrupting classrooms every day,” she wrote. “Part of this dilemma is our fault. It is time that we educate those who make policies that affect our students.”
Over many years of instructing, Testerman developed a knack for celebrating variations whereas emphasizing the shared humanity of all these she works with.
As a 2nd grade trainer, she created a curriculum utilizing a various array of well-known Americans that blends literacy and social research. Today she works with 21 kids whose first language will not be English. She mentioned her college students converse 5 totally different languages, with their households hailing from 5 totally different nations on 4 continents. Among them are kids simply starting to be taught English and older kids near mastery of English.
Watching a toddler purchase one other language is “an amazing, magical transformation,” Testerman mentioned. “There’s a level of excitement in a learner when they realize they are able to understand the language they are hearing around them.”
ESL instruction for these with little or no English begins with utilizing photos and hand gestures to show phrases for easy, on a regular basis objects corresponding to books and pencils. Then she strikes to easy sentences like “I have a pencil. I have a computer. I have a black computer,” Testerman mentioned.
The first full sentence she teaches college students with no English is “May I please use the bathroom.” It could sound trivial, nevertheless it’s vitally necessary for her college students, together with fundamental phrases like, “I need some water, please,” or “I need a pencil, please,” she mentioned.
“Just to see how they light up at being able to give themselves a voice is just incredible,” she mentioned.
Testerman additionally develops shut ties with the households of her college students. She goes out of her approach to assist them navigate American tradition and combine into the neighborhood. That consists of issues like instructing them concerning the native library system or the publish workplace. She additionally takes steps to assist her longtime neighbors on this Appalachian city of about 4,500 folks to simply accept the newcomers.
“Simple gestures such as sitting with my students’ families at high school graduation or a school play goes a long way in helping them find acceptance in our rural area since I have belonged to this community for decades and others trust my lead,” Testerman wrote in her trainer of the 12 months finalist utility.
“Her kindness shows. Her compassion is really deep,” mentioned sophomore Nadeen Aglan, who’s the sister of Ali and Jasmen and had Testerman as a 2nd grade trainer.
Testerman mentioned she primarily makes use of a translation app to speak together with her college students’ mother and father. It works properly, though it isn’t excellent. After she was introduced as a finalist for trainer of the 12 months, she bought “a really sweet note from a mama about all the things I had done for her child,” she mentioned, however with one language gaffe. The opening line? “Congratulations for nothing!”
https://www.foxnews.com/us/tennessee-educator-named-teacher-year-creating-curriculum-helps-diverse-students-thrive
