National Teacher of the Year speaks at Stanton eighth grade graduation

Last Tuesday, Stanton students, teachers, parents and residents had the opportunity to hear Sarah Brown Wessling, the Iowa Teacher of the Year, and the 2010 National Teacher of the Year. She was announced at the 2010 recipient of the award at a White House ceremony with President Barack Obama on April 29.

Wessling is the 60th National Teacher of the Year and will be the spokesperson to represent the teaching profession both nationally and internationally. Her official duties began June 1.

When Wessling was selected as Iowa’s Teacher of the Year, she was asked, and accepted, an invitation to speak at Stanton Community School’s eighth grade graduation.

About a week later, Wessling was selected from among 56 candidates to receive the honor of being the 2010 National Teacher of the Year.

Now her schedule is filling quickly and she hopes she can visit all 50 states. She smiled, saying she was especially hoped to be invited to Hawaii and Alaska. Anthony J. Mullen, the 2009 Teacher of the Year, visited 38 states and recently completed his responsibilities and opportunities that came with the honor.

Wessling’s high school students in Johnston, Iowa, nominated her as Iowa’s teacher of the year. After learning of the nomination, Wessling had to request three letters of recommendation and submit seven essays for judging. A committee narrowed the Iowa nominees to five and Wessling was selected as Iowa’s Teacher of the Year.

State winners’ essays and letters were sent on to a committee of education professionals who narrowed the field from 56 to four. Wessling, who grew up in Winterset and graduated from high school there in 1993, spent three days in Washington, D.C. being interviewed before the final selection was made.

When asked about the sacrifice she and her family would be making as she fulfills responsibilities that come with the honor, Wessling said she had a great network of family support. “My husband was in this from the beginning. Besides,” she said, “I kept telling my husband all along the way, ‘We don’t have to worry about it, it won’t go any further.’”

But it did, and now her calendar is beginning to fill. She had to set aside her spring semester with her students already, and she is juggling schedules to have time with her family.

She has confidence in her children’s sitter and preschool, as well as the extended family, and, “it was difficult to be out of the classroom last semester and it will be for the year ahead.” She said she hopes her family will eventually see that this year benefitted others.

Wessling told her Stanton audience she has taught English and literature classes for the past ten years, but that she didn’t start out taking courses to be a teacher.

She said she comes from a long line of teachers. Her mother, who has taught for 27 years, was the youngest of ten children, all of whom became involved in some form of teaching. She, however, thought she would go to Iowa State (Ames) to pursue other careers.

She wanted to be up in front of people, so she chose broadcasting. That didn’t seem to be a good fit.

Wessling then opted for philosophy, but she and her friends couldn’t imagine her being content sitting in a corner thinking about thinking, so she chose psychology.

That, she said, would permit her to study people’s behavior. However, she discovered a psychology major needed to take science courses and spend time in hospitals, and she wanted neither of those.

She took a year off between her freshman and sophomore years to do some soul searching. One day it hit her that the parts she liked about other professions were actually parts within the teaching profession.

Since then, she has received her bachelor’s degree in education, her masters’ degree in literature and has certifications that opened other avenues.

Her masters work took three years because of her teaching and family responsibilities.

Wessling is married and has three children, ages 6, 4, and one almost six months old, all of whom accompanied her when she met President Barack Obama in his oval office shortly after becoming the National Teacher of the Year.

She told Stanton students about the goodie bag each child received, which included presidential M&Ms and a yo-yo. Her oldest, Evan, a kindergartner, tried the wooden yo-yo before tugging on the president’s jacket to say, “I don’t like the yo-yo. It’s too hard. Could I have an apple instead?”

The president, she said, was very friendly with the children, even wiggling Evan’s loose tooth.

“The whole thing was surreal,” she told her fellow teachers when they met later Tuesday afternoon. “You know, I’m a mom, too, so I’m standing there in front of the closed door to the Oval Office, waiting my turn. Three minutes before I meet the President, I have to change a diaper. Then the door opens, and there he is.”

She said the office seemed smaller than she had expected and the ceiling seemed low, “all of which made the president seem huge.” She said the president was friendly, and, when she later met Vice President Biden and his wife in their mansion, they were funny.

When asked if she had met other family members, Wessling said First Lady Michelle was at a funeral and the daughters were in school, but she did get to meet Obama’s dog.

Wessling appears to employ two basic techniques with her audiences, and a variety of techniques in the classroom.

One technique Tuesday was to ask questions. She told her listeners she is convinced a good question is more important than a good answer because it shows the learner is engaged in the thinking. After hearing that, a student asked Wessling, “Did you ask the president a question?”

The other technique Wessling uses is storytelling, or reading someone else’s story expressively. She read a story to her elementary audience, and told at least two others, one of which was her own story of becoming a teacher. 

“I love to tell stories, read stories, and write stories, but the best stories are your stories, and every single one of you has an important story to tell,” she told her young audience. “What do you love? What scares you? Find out what your own stories are,” she urged them.

For older students, she asked them, “What was the last question you asked?” A few responded, then she said, “What we learn can be so passive, but if we are asking good questions, we care, we are engaged. Good questions are important.”

Wessling recommended older students do some summer reading of books that made her ask questions. She said she used to read 80 books a year, but with other duties, like having young children, she now reads about half that amount.

Books she suggested were Viktor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning”; John Katz’ “Geeks”; the graphic novel “American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang; her recent “book of the year” by Markus Zusak entitled “The Book Thief”; Barbara Ehrenreich’s “Nickel and Dimed” story of trying to live on minimum wage; any collection of Flannery O’Connor’s short stories; and “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” by Jonathan Safran.

Each of those recommended books left Wessling wrestling with questions that arise within the human experience, such those dealing with pain, stereotypes, the American dream and goodness.

When speaking to the elementary students, her question was, “Who are your heroes?” She was especially touched when one said, “Teachers.”

Wessling told her audiences she became a teacher because she could not be anything else. “It was the realization of something I always knew. I love to learn. I love kids. I never feel like I’m going to a job,” Wessling said. “I do what I love with intensity.” 

When Superintendent Judd Ashley asked her why she did what she did, she said, “I do it for the same reasons you all do it, to see someone tackle something they think they couldn’t do and discover they can,” and then reiterated several previous statements about her love for students and teaching. Finding a commonality with her audience, she asked them, “Why do you do what you do?”

Before anyone else could answer, Ashley said, “Oh, we knew why we do it, we just wanted to see if you knew, too.” The teachers enjoyed laughing with her.

She offered tips on how she motivates, how she disciplines, what five skills she thinks will be essential in the coming years, the benefits of podcasting responses to her students about their papers, and she clarified the misunderstanding that had implied her students could access facebook in the classroom. She said she has her students create “facebook-like” pages for classroom use about characters in her literature classes.

When asked what subject she would teach if she didn’t teach literature, she said she thought she would want to teach art.

“I’m not good in art, but I hope my teaching is art…I want to be an artist in whatever I do.”

Tuesday evening at the eighth grade graduation, she expressed her appreciation for the size of the Stanton community and school, saying she hoped they realized how good they had it by being a small town. She admitted she doesn’t know the names of all the seniors in her high school. Teachers present knew she didn’t let any of her students leave her classroom at the end of the year without telling them what they taught her, why she would miss them or what she had discovered about them. They had heard a letter or two from former students who wanted her to know what those comments had meant.

Wessling told students about her hero, her brother, who passionately served with the Air Force under the motto “That others may live”. She asked them what they were afraid of, and encouraged them to overcome their fears and find what they will become passionate about. She urged them to set goals and to make decisions based on what is best for them right now as they honestly face situations.

Ashley also encouraged the students to create their future as they enter high school, to think before they act, and to do their best as they become new leaders.

Those receiving diplomas and moving on into high school next fall are Allison Aufdenberg, Benjamin Coddington, Cade Confer, Erin DeKay, Macy Elwood, Moriah Kammerer, Ashley Palmquist, Phillip Pfeiffer, Morgan Schrader, Justin Sederburg, Sara Sederburg, Tyler Stubbendeck, Carmen Subbert, Daniel Swanson, Cathrine Tiemann and Madison Wookey.