Re: Aim High Level 4 Teacher\\\\\\'s Book Free 15
Eduviges Gearlds
The goal of the Tennessee Teacher of the Year program is to recognize and celebrate the wealth of excellent teachers that exist across the state. We applaud teachers who prioritize the needs of all children, who devote their professional lives to enriching the lives of Tennessee students, and who demonstrate exceptional gains in student achievement. Additionally, the program aims to:
Teachers of the Year are selected competitively through five cycles: school, district, region, grand division, and state in three grade bands: pre-k, elementary, middle and high school. Please note that these levels refer to the grade(s) taught by the teacher and not to the grade structure or designation of the school.
Missy Testerman, the 2023-24 Tennessee Teacher of the Year, currently serves as the English as a Second Language (ESL) Specialist and ESL Director at Rogersville City Schools. Prior to her current role, she served as a first and second grade teacher at Rogersville City School for 30 years before taking advantage of Tennessee's Grow Your Own initiative and adding an ESL endorsement to her licensure. In addition to her role within the school, she also coordinates the system's Summer Camps. Testerman is heavily involved in many programs in her district, including being a mentor teacher and a member of the teacher leadership team. She is a staunch advocate for students, teachers, and families.
Testerman considers her greatest contributions to her profession to be the love and desire for learning that she has instilled in countless students over the past three decades. Testerman feels that seeing her former students succeed in life is the basis of her continued desire to educate the next generation, and she is grateful that she has been able to spend her career helping to ensure that students in her community receive a broadened education while living in a rural setting.
The department recommends that districts share the goals of the Teacher of the Year program, eligibility, and selection criteria with teachers and principals to inform their nominations. Each school faculty may choose a teacher(s) in each category to participate in the system competition. Categories consist of grades pre-k & elementary, middle, and high school. Please note that these categories refer to the grade taught by the teacher and do not refer to the grade structure or designation of the school.
While multiple teachers from each grade band may be selected for Teacher of the Year at the school level, it is recommended that the number of teachers chosen in each category does not to exceed one per 20 faculty members (or portion of 20) in that category.
It is recommended that school-level Teacher of the Year finalists complete part I of the Teacher of the Year application (or some comparable district application). The school-level Teacher of the Year finalist should submit applications to the director of schools (or designee) for the district-level selection process.
District selection committees should include educators with a variety of experience, such as curriculum supervisors, principals, teacher leaders, and previous Teachers of the Year (district, region, grand division winner, or state Teachers of the Year), to review applications of each school-level Teacher of the Year. Each selection committee should include diverse representation based on gender, race, subject areas, and the grade bands to be considered (grades pre-k & elementary, middle and high school).
Committees select one teacher from each category (grades pre-k & elementary, middle and high school) to represent the district in the region-level selection process. Please note that these categories refer to the grade taught by the teacher and do not refer to the grade structure or designation of the school.
Director of schools (or designee) must submit the names of the district-level Teachers of the Year using the online district-level Teacher of the Year Report Form by 11:59 p.m. CT on December 1, 2023.
Improving students' relationships with teachers has important, positive and long-lasting implications for both students' academic and social development. Solely improving students' relationships with their teachers will not produce gains in achievement. However, those students who have close, positive and supportive relationships with their teachers will attain higher levels of achievement than those students with more conflict in their relationships.
Picture a student who feels a strong personal connection to her teacher, talks with her teacher frequently, and receives more constructive guidance and praise rather than just criticism from her teacher. The student is likely to trust her teacher more, show more engagement in learning, behave better in class and achieve at higher levels academically. Positive teacher-student relationships draw students into the process of learning and promote their desire to learn (assuming that the content material of the class is engaging, age-appropriate and well matched to the student's skills).
High quality academic instruction is designed to be appropriate to students' educational levels. It also creates opportunity for thinking and analysis, uses feedback effectively to guide students' thinking, and extends students' prior knowledge.
Teachers who foster positive relationships with their students create classroom environments more conducive to learning and meet students' developmental, emotional and academic needs. Here are some concrete examples of closeness between a teacher and a student:
Teachers who experience close relationships with students reported that their students were less likely to avoid school, appeared more self-directed, more cooperative and more engaged in learning (Birch & Ladd, 1997; Decker, Dona, & Christenson, 2007; Klem & Connell, 2004). Teachers who use more learner-centered practices (i.e., practices that show sensitivity to individual differences among students, include students in the decision-making, and acknowledge students' developmental, personal and relational needs) produced greater motivation in their students than those who used fewer of such practices (Daniels & Perry, 2003).
Students who attended math classrooms with higher emotional support reported increased engagement in mathematics learning. For instance, fifth graders said they were willing to exert more effort to understand the math lesson. They enjoyed thinking about and solving problems in math and were more willing to help peers learn new concepts (Rimm-Kaufman, Baroody, Larsen, Curby, & Abry, 2014). Among kindergarteners, students reported liking school more and experiencing less loneliness if they had a close relationship with their teachers. Further, kindergarteners with better teacher-student relationships showed better performance on measures of early academic skills (Birch & Ladd, 1997).
The quality of early teacher-student relationships has a long-lasting impact. Specifically, students who had more conflict with their teachers or showed more dependency toward their teachers in kindergarten also had lower academic achievement (as reflected in mathematics and language arts grades) and more behavioral problems (e.g., poorer work habits, more discipline problems) through the eighth grade. These findings were greater for boys than for girls (Hamre & Pianta, 2001). Further work indicates that kindergarten children with more closeness and less conflict with teachers developed better social skills as they approached the middle school years than kindergarten children with more conflictual relationships experiences in the past (Berry & O'Connor, 2009). A recent study examining student-teacher relationships throughout elementary school (first through fifth grade) found that teacher-student closeness linked to gains in reading achievement, while teacher-student conflict related to lower levels of reading achievement (McCormick & O'Connor, 2014).
In this video clip, a preschool teacher is facilitating positive peer interactions by communicating with students in a warm, calm voice and making encouraging statements, such as "Very good teamwork!'
Teachers who have negative relationships with a student show evidence of frustration, irritability and anger toward that student. Teachers might display their negativity through snide and sarcastic comments toward the student or describe the feeling that they are always struggling or in conflict with a particular student. Often, teachers will describe a specific student as "one who exhausts them" or "a student who leaves them feeling drained and burned out."
Negative teacher-student relationships can amplify when teachers show irritability and anger toward several or many of the students in the classroom. In these types of classrooms, teachers may find themselves resorting to yelling and harsh punitive control. Teacher-student communications may appear sarcastic or disrespectful. Student victimization or bullying may be common occurrences in such negative classrooms (Pianta, La Paro, & Hamre, 2006).
In this clip, a third grade teacher is monitoring and assisting her students during an independent reading activity. She kneels down next to one of her students and asks him questions to determine if he comprehends the story. The teacher positions herself in close proximity to the student and speaks to him with a calm and respectful tone of voice, which conveys the message that she is here to support him.
Supportive teacher-student relationships are just as important to middle and high school students as they are to elementary students. Positive relationships encourage students' motivation and engagement in learning. Older students need to feel that their teachers respect their opinions and interests just as much as younger students do. Even in situations where adolescents do not appear to care about what teachers do or say, teacher actions and words do matter and may even have long term positive (or negative) consequences.
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