A Message from ILSTOY Teachers to All Educators

Happy Teacher Appreciation Week! 

Ever since our stay-at-home-order, I've been pretty bogged down with not only teaching from home, but a lot of other outside projects, too. (Have you seen my media page lately? Lots of podcasts, webinars, etc... I know I don't even have them all listed there!) So needless to say, both this blog and Reset EDU channels have suffered as a result... :(

One of my outside projects is a weekly LIVE tech help webinar for teachers across IL state. It's an effort through Teach Plus IL and the ILSTOY network to create PLCs of teachers, no matter where they teach/live in the state, to help them with their remote learning challenges. It's been fun, but intimidating! The first week was all about Google Classroom, and last week we demonstrated Screencastify for teachers. I was lucky to have Nef from Screencastify stop by to take some Q&A from the attendees. This week will be all about Flipgrid, and Jornea has agreed to stop by! I'm pretty excited. Coming up after that are sessions on Jamboard (w/my friend Kim Mattina of The Suite Talk) and Google Suite for Education tools. 

Another project I'm involved with is the ILSTOY (IL State Teachers of the Year) organization. We wanted to do something to help show our support for teaching during our current situation. One of those things is to partner up with ASCD and PBS to support the #SeniorPortrait Campaign "to amplify the voices of millions of high school seniors whose class experiences were dramatically disrupted by the coronavirus shutdown."

Our other project was a short video that we released to show our support and thanks to teachers out there doing whatever they can to help support our students. You can check it out here:

I know that we would love to get as wide a reach as possible with this video! Please share this message on your social media channels and tag a teacher who you know could use a little boost!

- Mrs L.

2020 IL State Teacher of the Year Finalist!

Something really amazing happened to me over the summer, and I've had to keep it a secret for so long; I'm happy it's finally out there!

I was nominated by my awesome principal, Linda Fehrenbacher, for a State of IL "Those Who Excel" award in the classroom teacher category. This alone was an incredible honor... and a lot of paperwork!

I completed my application, which included about twelve pages of writing, plus letters of recommendation from my nominator, a fellow teacher, an administrator, a parent, and a student! It was a lot of work, but I was really excited to be selected from a whole bunch of truly awesome teachers in my district!

Over the summer, I received a phone call from my superintendent, saying that he had "good news to share." Imagine my surprise when he said that not only had I won an Award of Excellence from the state in the "Those Who Excel" awards, but I was a finalist for Teacher of the Year! Holy cow!

Last week, I took a solo road trip (three hours each way!) to Springfield, IL to be interviewed for the final selection. It involved a videotaped interview, and a conversation with a couple of really awesome past Teacher of the Year winners. Intimidating, yes, but I think I did ok!

I know whatever the turn out is (we find out on October 19th!), it is an amazing honor to have made it this far, and I am so grateful to be given this opportunity, and listed among this awesome group of fellow educators.

...but it also would be really sweet to win. :) Fingers crossed!


- Mrs L.